HITLER SPEAKS: Conversations of 1932-34 recorded by Hermann Rauschning,
in
which Hitler lays out his ideas and plans, years before implementing
them.
Newsletter published on 14 November 2014
Rauschning was Head of State of Danzig, which at that time was
a "free
city", an independent state with its own currency. He joined the
Nazi
Party, but left after discovering Hitler's true
intentions.
Transcribed by Peter Myers, November 14, 2014.
This
material is at http://mailstar.net/Hitler-Speaks-Rauschning.doc
Nazi
missionaries (e.g. Mark Weber) ridicule Rauschning's book as a
fake. But it
accords well with the memoirs of Otto Strasser, e.g. HITLER
AND I: http://mailstar.net/otto-strasser-hitler.html
The
Holocaust debate has blinded many anti-Zionists to Hitler's true
personality. Lots of people are thinking, "If Zionism is so terrible,
maybe Hitler was right".
Books like Strasser's and Rauschning's are
essential reading, because
the authors knew Hitler close-up for many years,
both before and after
attaining power.
I draw this conclusion: one
may not like Zionism, but Nazism is no
solution. In fact, as Harry Waton put
it, Nazism is an imitation of
Judaism: http://mailstar.net/naz-jud.html
Some
quotes from Rauschning's book:
Hitler:
"Just as the Jews became the
all-embracing world power they are today
only in their dispersal, so shall
we today, as the true chosen people of
God"
"There cannot be two
Chosen People. We are God's People."
"Israel, the historic people of the
spiritual God, cannot but be the
irreconcilable enemy of the new, the
German, Chosen people."
Rauschning: "At the back of Hitler's
Anti-Semitism there is revealed an
actual war of the gods".
Full text
of HITLER SPEAKS
{published in the United States as THE VOICE OF
DESTRUCTION}
{p. 5} HITLER SPEAKS
A Series of Political
Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims
by Hermann
Rauschning
London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd.
{p. 6} First
Published December 1939
Second Impression December 1939
http://mailstar.net/Hitler-Speaks-Rauschning.doc
Monday, December 8, 2014
703 Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy in Beijing
Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy in
Beijing
Newsletter published on 12 November 2014
(1) Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy
in Beijing
(2) US-Japan conflicts stall Obama's Trans-Pacific economic pact
(3) Xi pushes China-backed free trade area (FTAAP) as rival to TPP
(4) Japanese and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing, but antagonism remains
(5) TPP & TAP Lies - Paul Craig Roberts
(1) Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy
in Beijing
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/11/apec-n11.html
Obama escalates pressure on China at APEC summit
By Mike Head
11 November 2014
US President Barack Obama yesterday set a confrontational tone for this
week's Asia-Pacific summits, starting with a series of provocative moves
directed against China at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
meeting in Beijing.
Coming on top of doubling the US troop numbers in Iraq, and NATO's
preparations for large-scale exercises on Russia's borders, Obama's
performance highlighted the rapid escalation of Washington's aggressive
stance globally since the mid-term US congressional elections.
In a provocative rebuff to his Chinese hosts, just before the APEC
proceedings began, Obama convened a separate meeting, inside the US
embassy, of countries participating in the US-led Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP), which excludes China.
The TPP sets out a comprehensive framework for dismantling all
obstacles, such as state-owned enterprises and investment regulations,
to the dominance of American finance capital in the Asia Pacific
economy. It has become the central economic thrust of the Obama
administration's confrontational "pivot to Asia" against China, which
also includes a US military build-up throughout the region.
Obama staged the TPP gathering as a display of intent. This was despite
ongoing disagreements between its participants, particularly the US and
Japan, that stymied his push to conclude the TPP before the end of the
year. Addressing the assembled heads of government, he declared: "This
has the potential for being a historic achievement. It's now up to all
of us to see if we can finalise a deal that is both ambitious and
comprehensive."
At Obama's insistence, the TPP partners agreed that the treaty must take
priority over, and provide the "pathway" for, APEC's long-standing plan,
now championed heavily by China, for a Free Trade Area of the Asia
Pacific (FTAAP). In the negotiations before the summit, US officials
forced China to back down on the wording of the APEC communiqué, which
was to commit to the FTAAP's completion. Instead, the document now pays
only lip service to the FTAAP, consigning it to a two-year "collective
strategic study."
Obama then delivered a speech at the APEC business CEO summit, in which
he bluntly asserted American leadership of the entire world. Not only
would the US remain "a Pacific power," but "the one constant--the one
global necessity--is and has been American leadership." Claiming to have
presided over a resurgence of US manufacturing and jobs, Obama declared
that the US was now "leading from a position of strength." The TPP, he
emphasised, would provide "the model for trade in the 21st century."
While proclaiming twice, for the record, "we want China to do well,"
Obama issued a long list of demands on the Beijing leadership. The first
was "an ambitious, high-standard, bilateral investment treaty that opens
up China's economy to American investors."
Other demands were "a more level playing field" for foreign companies to
compete with Chinese companies, "the protection of intellectual property
rights" and the rejection of "cybertheft of trade secrets for commercial
gain." Also included was approval of US "biotechnology advances" in
Chinese farming, "a more market-determined exchange rate" and "human
rights and freedom of the press."
These demands are designed to tear down any barriers to establishing
Wall Street's economic hegemony over China and the region. Obama stated
that he looked forward to discussing them with President Xi Jinping.
Prior to the APEC summit, Washington intervened to oppose South Korean
and Australian participation in China's new Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB), which is a vehicle for funneling Chinese finance
into development projects across the region. In Australia's case, the US
secured the reversal of an in-principle agreement to join, citing
"security" concerns. That intervention sent a clear signal that China's
continued economic expansion is now regarded by Washington as a military
issue.
Despite the diplomatic formalities in Beijing, complete with ceremonial
photo shoots, the message from Washington could not be missed. Forbes
magazine noted: "The Obama administration has, at least from Beijing's
perspective, marred the APEC gathering. Beijing staged the event as a
showcase of growing might." Instead, the Chinese regime's planned
centrepiece, the FTAAP, was shot down.
Forbes cited comments by an unnamed Chinese official to the South China
Morning Post: "The US wants to impede FTAAP. This is really annoying for
us." According to the magazine, China's exclusion from the TPP "will
hurt them." According to Forbes, the Washington-based Peterson Institute
for International Economics estimates that the TPP will cost China $100
billion a year in lost exports, and that this will "sting" because of
falling economic growth and rising debt levels in China.
The Chinese regime attempted to counter the US offensive by
strengthening its ties with other Asian-Pacific economies, while making
some concessions to Washington's demands.
On Sunday, the day before the APEC summit began, Xi announced a $40
billion contribution to a "Silk Road Fund" for infrastructure projects
to boost China's land and maritime trade routes across Asia and the
Indian Ocean.
As the APEC meeting got underway, Beijing leadership finalised a second
major gas supply deal with Russia, signed a free trade agreement with
South Korea and signaled the completion of a similar trade pact with
Australia.
Also yesterday, China's central bank pushed up the value of the
country's currency, the renminbi by 0.37 percent. It was the sharpest
single-day move in more than four years, making goods from other Asian
nations, as well as the US, more competitive in the Chinese market.
In addition, Chinese securities regulators said they would begin
allowing investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong to trade shares on each
other's stock markets on November 17, potentially giving US and other
foreign buyers access to $2 trillion worth of Chinese companies.
Wall Street particularly welcomed this move. "Hong Kong stands at the
forefront of the largest capital account opening of a country since
WWII," the US-based broker Jefferies told its clients. Goldman Sachs
said the opening of Shanghai to foreign investors was an opportunity
"simply too big to ignore," adding: "The scheme essentially ... creates
the world's second-largest equity market by market cap," second only to
the New York Stock Exchange.
None of this, however, will satiate the appetites of the US finance
houses, or end the intensifying US economic, strategic and military
pressure on China. Washington is demanding nothing less than the
overturning of all restrictions that stand in the way of US imperialism
subjugating China.
The APEC summit, which traditionally focuses on trade and investment,
will be followed later this week by an Association of South East Asian
(ASEAN) conference in Burma (Myanmar). There Obama will further
encourage ASEAN members, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, to
pursue territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea.
Next weekend, during a G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, Obama will
deliver what the White House described as a major speech on "US
leadership in the Asia-Pacific." No advance details of the speech have
been provided, but it is certain to mark a further escalation of
Washington's anti-China "pivot," which Obama first formally unveiled in
an address to the Australian parliament in 2011.
(2) US-Japan conflicts stall Obama's Trans-Pacific economic pact
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/28/tppa-o28.html
By Mike Head 28 October 2014
Week-long negotiations in Canberra, followed by three days of
ministerial talks in Sydney last weekend, failed to break a deadlock
between the American and Japanese governments over the proposed
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP is a treaty being aggressively pushed by the Obama
administration to establish unchallenged economic hegemony in the
Asia-Pacific. The failure of the talks to make any progress toward
finalising it, despite intense US pressure, is another measure of rising
economic and geo-strategic tensions globally, not just between the US,
China and Russia, but also between the US and its major imperialist
rivals, notably Japan.
Four years after the former Democratic Party of Japan government first
indicated its readiness to join the TPP, and 18 months after the present
Liberal Democratic Party government said it would sign up to the treaty,
no agreement is in sight. Bitter disputes continue between the US and
Japan over access to each other's agricultural and auto markets, which
is just part of a wider agenda of battering down barriers to US trade
and investment.
"There is no prospect for an agreement on market access at the moment,"
Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari told a news conference in
Sydney. After meeting with US Trade Representative Michael Froman on
Monday morning on the margin of the plenary session, Amari declared:
"The problems left are extremely difficult and we cannot solve them easily."
President Barack Obama said this year he wanted to conclude the talks by
the time he travels to Asia next month. But Amari, when asked whether a
TPP summit meeting would take place in Beijing, on the sidelines of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November, said nothing
of that sort had been discussed.
Amari's statements made a mockery of the claims by the host of the
latest round of talks, Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, that a TPP
deal could be finalised by the end of 2014. "There is a real sense that
we are within reach of the finish line," Robb claimed. Alongside Froman,
the Australian minister pushed hard for the talks to avoid missing a
deadline set by Obama, for the third year in a row.
The official statement issued by the representatives of the 12 TPP
countries insisted that "we have made significant progress" and that a
treaty was "crystallising." Such claims, however, have been made in
previous TPP communiqués.
Even Robb conceded that "difficult decisions" remained outstanding. He
mentioned intellectual property, state-owned enterprises and "other
areas," on top of the US-Japan market access disputes. No details were
provided, in keeping with the secrecy surrounding the entire TPP
process, which is being conducted by government and hundreds of
corporate lobbyists behind the backs of the population.
Without agreement between Washington and Tokyo, the TPP will be an
abject failure. Together the two countries constitute about 90 percent
of the gross domestic product of the negotiating partners. The TPP talks
also involve Australia, Canada, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam,
New Zealand, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
The TPP, first conceived in 2003 by Singapore, New Zealand and Chile,
was literally taken over by the Obama administration in 2009. It became
an essential component of Washington's military and strategic "pivot" to
Asia to combat China, which is effectively excluded from the TPP.
More fundamentally, the TPP seeks to reshape the entire "economic
architecture" of the Asia-Pacific region in the interests of Wall Street
finance capital and the largest US corporations. In the words of Obama's
former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, the TPP, combined with a
similar treaty in Europe, is about "writing the rules that will govern
the global economy for the next century."
While presented as a "free trade" pact, the TPP's 29 chapters go far
beyond traditional trade issues. Apart from tariffs and trade barriers,
the TPP is aimed at tearing down all legal, regulatory and government
impediments to American investment throughout the region, so that every
aspect of economic and social life is restructured in line with the
profit requirements of US finance houses and transnationals.
In Japan's case, this means not just demolishing the country's tariffs
on politically sensitive farm products--rice, wheat, beef and pork,
dairy and sugar--but gaining access to other lucrative sectors of the
Japan economy.
A US Trade Representative document this year listed "barriers" that the
US wants dismantled in a long list of key industries. These include
Japan Post, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, legal
services, education, military contracts, airlines, ports, public works
construction contracts, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
For months, Obama and his envoys have publicly cajoled Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe and his government to give way. Last month, US Trade
Representative Froman wrote an opinion piece for the London-based
Financial Times accusing Japan of jeopardising the TPP. This was after
talks in Washington ended in acrimony, with Amari, his Japanese
counterpart walking out.
Froman declared that the stakes were "high" for Japan, saying it was
reneging on promises to pursue a "bold vision" for the TPP as a key
component of Abe's "third arrow" of structural economic reform. Froman
urged Abe to stand firm against unnamed "vested interests" in Japan.
Obama himself then phoned Abe, urging him to be "bold" in the TPP
negotiations, insisting that their partnership was the cornerstone of US
engagement with the region. This was followed by a visit by US Commerce
Secretary Penny Pritzker to meet with Abe to reiterate the message.
These thinly veiled warnings about the harm to US-Japan relations have
failed to produce any agreement. This points to an increasing
assertiveness by Abe's government, and not just domestic resistance by
"vested interests" to his "third arrow" agenda.
This third plank of "Abenomics," unveiled in July, consists of a
far-reaching program of more than 200 pro-market restructuring measures
that will undercut some protected sections of business and also make
deep inroads into the social position of the Japanese working class.
Abe took the decision, in March 2013, to sign up to the TPP, despite any
agreement to scrap agricultural tariffs threatening to shatter the rural
base of his Liberal Democratic Party, as a means of pursuing this
aggressive pro-market offensive to end two decades of economic stagnation.
Since taking office nearly two years ago, Abe has closely aligned
himself with Obama's "pivot," but he has also used the rising tensions
with China to push for Japan's re-militarisation, including by
"reinterpreting" the so-called pacifist constitution imposed on Japan by
the US after World War II.
While Abe remains publicly committed to the TPP, the impasse points to
underlying, intractable conflicts between the interests of US
imperialism and those of its current allies such as Japan, that have
been exacerbated by the ongoing global economic breakdown.
(3) Xi pushes China-backed free trade area (FTAAP) as rival to TPP
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN0IV05F20141111
Inaugurating APEC, Xi urges faster talks on China-backed free trade area
Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:43am GMT
BEIJING (Reuters) - The global economic recovery is unstable and nations
in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) bloc should speed up
free trade talks to spur growth, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on
Tuesday.
Speaking at the start of a summit of APEC leaders, Xi urged the meeting
to speed up talks on a trade liberalisation framework called the Free
Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP,) that is being pushed by Beijing.
"Currently, the global economic recovery still faces many unstable and
uncertain factors. Facing the new situation, we should further promote
regional economic integration and create a pattern of opening up that is
conducive to long-term development," Xi said.
"We should vigorously promote the Asia-Pacific free trade zone, setting
the goal, direction and roadmap and turn the vision into reality as soon
as possible."
Some see a proposed study on the FTAAP plan, which will be presented to
APEC leaders for approval, as a way to divert attention from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement being pushed by the
United States. China is not part of the TPP, which seeks to establish a
free-trade bloc stretching from Vietnam to Chile and Japan, encompassing
about 800 million people and almost 40 percent of the global economy.
China has not been enthusiastic about the TPP, fearing that it is being
used by Washington as a way to either force it to open markets by
signing up or else isolate it from other regional economies as trade is
diverted to TPP signatories.
The TPP is widely seen as the economic backbone of U.S. President Barack
Obama's "pivot" to Asia, what some experts view as an attempt to balance
China's rise by establishing a larger U.S. presence in the region,
including military assets.
Xi was quoted by state news agency Xinhua on Monday as saying that FTAAP
"does not go against existing free trade arrangements which are
potential pathways to realise FTAAP's goals".
He said APEC's 21 economies should play a leading and coordinating role,
break all sorts of shackles and usher in a new round of opening up,
communication and integration. [...]
(4) Japanese and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing, but antagonism remains
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/11/jpch-n11.html
Japanese and Chinese leaders hold first meeting in Beijing
By Ben McGrath 11 November 2014
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping met
for the first time on Monday on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing. Xi had previously refused
to meet with Abe since the two came to power in November and December
2012 respectively.
The meeting was a cold affair at the Great Hall of the People, lasting
less than 30 minutes. The two exchanged a stiff handshake for the
cameras before sitting down for talks. "I believe that not only our
Asian neighbors but many other countries have long hoped that Japan and
China hold talks," Abe said after the meeting. "We finally lived up to
their expectations and made a first step to improve our ties."
Abe said he and Xi discussed setting up a hotline, supposedly to prevent
clashes in the East China Sea over a cluster of five islands known as
the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands in China. Xi, in
response, placed responsibility for the chilly relations squarely on
Tokyo, calling on Japan to do more to "enhance mutual trust."
A comment by China's state-owned Xinhua news agency on Monday night was
more explicit. "The onus is primarily on Abe," it said. "It is Tokyo
that cast the ice spell on China-Japan relations; it is also Tokyo that
called for the Xi-Abe meeting. Now that Abe has talked the talk, he now
needs to walk the walk."
Earlier, it seemed that China had rejected the possibility of a summit
between Abe and Xi. A Xinhua commentary on November 3 stated that while
Xi would receive Abe, "that does not necessarily mean Abe's long-sought
formal talks with Xi during APEC would come true, which demands Abe
extend good faith and take real action to create the proper atmosphere."
China had demanded that Abe cease visiting the notorious Yasukuni war
shrine--seen as a glorification of Japan's militarist past--and admit
that a territorial dispute exists over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,
something the Japanese government has refused to do. Abe has not
publically indicated any change in his policies.
In the months leading up to the APEC meeting, Abe seemed to take a more
conciliatory stance toward China. He avoided visits to Yasukuni,
although ministers in his government went to the shrine in August and
October. In December 2013, Abe became the first sitting prime minister
to visit the shrine since Junichiro Koizumi in 2006. The shrine
symbolically inters soldiers who died in Japanese wars, including 14
convicted, class-A war criminals from World War II.
The Chinese and South Korean governments have used the visits to the
shrine to whip up anti-Japanese nationalism at home. In both countries
many people still have first-hand memories of the crimes committed by
Japanese imperialism during the 1930s and 1940s.
Abe's meeting with Xi should in no way be interpreted as a sign of an
easing of Tokyo's agenda of reviving Japanese militarism. Behind the
scenes, the Obama administration pushed for Abe to meet Xi because it
feared that his confrontational stance toward Beijing was beginning to
cut across Washington's own interests in the region.
Tensions between China and Japan have flared over the Diaoyu/Senkaku
islands since November 2012, when Japan nationalized three of the
islands. Aircraft and vessels from the two countries regularly confront
each other in the area, risking the danger of conflict. According to the
Japanese government, 110 Chinese ships entered waters around the islands
in September, to which the Japanese coast guard has responded.
US Secretary of State John Kerry stated on Saturday, before the APEC
meeting: "Any steps that the two countries can take to improve the
relationship and reduce tensions is helpful, not just to the two
countries, but helpful to the region."
The US in fact inflamed tensions by promising to defend Japan in any
military conflict with China over the islands. Washington has
strengthened military ties with other countries, including Japan, the
Philippines and Australia, as part of its "pivot" to Asia, a strategy
aimed at asserting US hegemony in the region and encircling and
preparing for war against China.
At the same time, however, the Obama administration does not want to be
drawn into a war with China on behalf of Japanese imperialism, in which
the agenda would be set by Tokyo. While the Senkakus have been the
touchstone in Tokyo for whipping up Japanese nationalism, the small,
uninhabited, rocky outcrops in the East China Sea have no political or
strategic significance for US imperialism.
Washington hoped that a conciliatory move by Abe in Beijing might also
create a better environment in which the Japanese and South Korean
governments can patch up their relationship in line with US interests.
One point of friction is the disputed islands known as Dokdo in South
Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
In a November 7 article, Ralph Cossa of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a think-tank with close links to the US defence
establishment, called on Abe to acknowledge that a dispute exists over
the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Cossa wrote: "As an added benefit, such a
statement would provide additional reassurance that Japan will not use
force against Dokdo. One would hope that Seoul would focus on the
positive parts of this message and not the repeated sovereignty claim."
Abe has signaled his readiness for a summit with South Korea's Park
Geun-hye, who has so far refused to meet him. Relations between the two
key US allies in the region took a turn for the worse in 2012 when Lee
Myung-bak became the first sitting South Korean president to visit the
disputed Dokdo islets.
The animosity between Tokyo and Seoul is a concern for Washington, as it
has prevented them from developing closer military ties in support of
the US "pivot." In 2012, the two governments were on the verge of
signing a military intelligence sharing agreement at Washington's
encouragement. The deal was derailed minutes before it was to be signed
after opposition erupted to the Lee government's attempt to push it
through without informing the National Assembly, South Korea's main
legislative body.
After Park came to power in February 2013, she would not meet with Abe
one-on-one. Obama was forced to hold a trilateral summit in March to
bring the two leaders together. Obama's selection of Mark Lippert as the
new ambassador to South Korea is viewed as a means to pressure Seoul to
align itself more closely with US military plans. Lippert is well
connected to the Pentagon and was Obama's chief strategist for East
Asian affairs.
(5) TPP & TAP Lies - Paul Craig Roberts
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:03:36 -0700
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39936.htm
The Lie Machine
Paul Craig Roberts
October 12, 2014 "ICH" - I have come to the conclusion that the West is
a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider,
for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the
Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership.
These so-called “partnerships” are in fact vehicles by which US
corporations make themselves immune to the sovereign laws of foreign
countries in which they do business. A sovereign country that attempts
to enforce its laws against an American corporation can be sued by the
corporation for “restraint of trade.” For example, if Monsanto wants to
sell GMO seeds in France or US corporations wish to sell
genetically-modified foods in France, and France enforces its laws
against GMOs, the Transatlantic Trade Partnership allows France to be
sued in jurisdictions outside the courts of France for “restraint of
trade.” In other words, preventing the entry into France of a prohibited
product constitutes restraint of trade.
This is the reason that the US has insisted that the Transatlantic and
Transpacific Partnerships be totally secretive and negotiated outside
the democratic process. Not even the US Congress has been permitted
knowledge of the negotiations.
Obviously, the Europeans and Asians who are agreeing with the terms of
these “partnerships” are the bought-and-paid-for agents of the US
corporations. If the partnerships go through, the only law in Europe and
Asia will be US law. The European and Asian government officials who
agree to the hegemony of US corporations over the laws of their
countries will be so handsomely paid that they could enter the realm of
the One Percent.
It is interesting to compare the BBC’s coverage (October 10) with that
of RT (October 11). The BBC reports that the aim of the Transatlantic
Partnership is to remove “barriers to bilateral commerce” and to
stimulate more trade and investment, economic growth and employment. The
BBC does not report that the removal of barriers includes barriers
against GMO products.
Everyone knows that the European Commission is corrupt. Who would be
surprised if its members hope to be enriched by the American
corporations? Little wonder the European Commission declared that
concerns that the Transatlantic partnership would impact the sovereignty
of countries is misplaced. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29572475
RT, which is restrained in reporting truth because it operates inside
the US, still manages to come to the point in its headline: “No TTIP:
Mass protests slam US-EU trade deal as ‘Corporate power grab’.”
All over Europe people are in the streets in mass rallies against secret
agreements by their corrupt governments for Washington to take over
their lives and businesses. RT reports that “social networks have been
mobilized for a mass campaign that has been calling on Europeans and
Americans to take action against ‘the biggest corporate power grab in a
decade’.”
RT quotes a leader of the demonstration in Berlin who says the secret
agreements “give corporations more rights they’ve ever had in history.”
As we all know, corporations already have too many rights.
“Protests are planned in 22 countries across Europe–marches, rallies and
other public events–in over 1,000 locations in UK, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, The Czech Republic and
Scandinavian countries.”
Did you hear about this latest American corporate power grab from Fox
“News,” CNN, New York Times, London Times, ABC? Of course not. Did you
hear about the massive protests against it? Of course not. You only hear
what the interest groups permit you to hear.
RT reports that the main aim of the international protests is “to
reclaim democracy” and to put an end to the secret deals that are
destroying life for everyone but the American corporations,
organizations now regarded worldwide as the epitome of evil.
http://rt.com/news/195144-europe-protests-stop-ttip/
These phony “trade agreements” are advocated as “free trade removal of
tariffs,” but what they remove are the sovereignties of countries.
America is already ruled by corporations. If these faux “trade
agreements” go through, Europe and Asia will also be ruled by American
corporations.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal
Beijing
Newsletter published on 12 November 2014
(1) Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy
in Beijing
(2) US-Japan conflicts stall Obama's Trans-Pacific economic pact
(3) Xi pushes China-backed free trade area (FTAAP) as rival to TPP
(4) Japanese and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing, but antagonism remains
(5) TPP & TAP Lies - Paul Craig Roberts
(1) Just before APEC began, Obama hosted TPP meeting inside US embassy
in Beijing
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/11/apec-n11.html
Obama escalates pressure on China at APEC summit
By Mike Head
11 November 2014
US President Barack Obama yesterday set a confrontational tone for this
week's Asia-Pacific summits, starting with a series of provocative moves
directed against China at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
meeting in Beijing.
Coming on top of doubling the US troop numbers in Iraq, and NATO's
preparations for large-scale exercises on Russia's borders, Obama's
performance highlighted the rapid escalation of Washington's aggressive
stance globally since the mid-term US congressional elections.
In a provocative rebuff to his Chinese hosts, just before the APEC
proceedings began, Obama convened a separate meeting, inside the US
embassy, of countries participating in the US-led Trans Pacific
Partnership (TPP), which excludes China.
The TPP sets out a comprehensive framework for dismantling all
obstacles, such as state-owned enterprises and investment regulations,
to the dominance of American finance capital in the Asia Pacific
economy. It has become the central economic thrust of the Obama
administration's confrontational "pivot to Asia" against China, which
also includes a US military build-up throughout the region.
Obama staged the TPP gathering as a display of intent. This was despite
ongoing disagreements between its participants, particularly the US and
Japan, that stymied his push to conclude the TPP before the end of the
year. Addressing the assembled heads of government, he declared: "This
has the potential for being a historic achievement. It's now up to all
of us to see if we can finalise a deal that is both ambitious and
comprehensive."
At Obama's insistence, the TPP partners agreed that the treaty must take
priority over, and provide the "pathway" for, APEC's long-standing plan,
now championed heavily by China, for a Free Trade Area of the Asia
Pacific (FTAAP). In the negotiations before the summit, US officials
forced China to back down on the wording of the APEC communiqué, which
was to commit to the FTAAP's completion. Instead, the document now pays
only lip service to the FTAAP, consigning it to a two-year "collective
strategic study."
Obama then delivered a speech at the APEC business CEO summit, in which
he bluntly asserted American leadership of the entire world. Not only
would the US remain "a Pacific power," but "the one constant--the one
global necessity--is and has been American leadership." Claiming to have
presided over a resurgence of US manufacturing and jobs, Obama declared
that the US was now "leading from a position of strength." The TPP, he
emphasised, would provide "the model for trade in the 21st century."
While proclaiming twice, for the record, "we want China to do well,"
Obama issued a long list of demands on the Beijing leadership. The first
was "an ambitious, high-standard, bilateral investment treaty that opens
up China's economy to American investors."
Other demands were "a more level playing field" for foreign companies to
compete with Chinese companies, "the protection of intellectual property
rights" and the rejection of "cybertheft of trade secrets for commercial
gain." Also included was approval of US "biotechnology advances" in
Chinese farming, "a more market-determined exchange rate" and "human
rights and freedom of the press."
These demands are designed to tear down any barriers to establishing
Wall Street's economic hegemony over China and the region. Obama stated
that he looked forward to discussing them with President Xi Jinping.
Prior to the APEC summit, Washington intervened to oppose South Korean
and Australian participation in China's new Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB), which is a vehicle for funneling Chinese finance
into development projects across the region. In Australia's case, the US
secured the reversal of an in-principle agreement to join, citing
"security" concerns. That intervention sent a clear signal that China's
continued economic expansion is now regarded by Washington as a military
issue.
Despite the diplomatic formalities in Beijing, complete with ceremonial
photo shoots, the message from Washington could not be missed. Forbes
magazine noted: "The Obama administration has, at least from Beijing's
perspective, marred the APEC gathering. Beijing staged the event as a
showcase of growing might." Instead, the Chinese regime's planned
centrepiece, the FTAAP, was shot down.
Forbes cited comments by an unnamed Chinese official to the South China
Morning Post: "The US wants to impede FTAAP. This is really annoying for
us." According to the magazine, China's exclusion from the TPP "will
hurt them." According to Forbes, the Washington-based Peterson Institute
for International Economics estimates that the TPP will cost China $100
billion a year in lost exports, and that this will "sting" because of
falling economic growth and rising debt levels in China.
The Chinese regime attempted to counter the US offensive by
strengthening its ties with other Asian-Pacific economies, while making
some concessions to Washington's demands.
On Sunday, the day before the APEC summit began, Xi announced a $40
billion contribution to a "Silk Road Fund" for infrastructure projects
to boost China's land and maritime trade routes across Asia and the
Indian Ocean.
As the APEC meeting got underway, Beijing leadership finalised a second
major gas supply deal with Russia, signed a free trade agreement with
South Korea and signaled the completion of a similar trade pact with
Australia.
Also yesterday, China's central bank pushed up the value of the
country's currency, the renminbi by 0.37 percent. It was the sharpest
single-day move in more than four years, making goods from other Asian
nations, as well as the US, more competitive in the Chinese market.
In addition, Chinese securities regulators said they would begin
allowing investors in Shanghai and Hong Kong to trade shares on each
other's stock markets on November 17, potentially giving US and other
foreign buyers access to $2 trillion worth of Chinese companies.
Wall Street particularly welcomed this move. "Hong Kong stands at the
forefront of the largest capital account opening of a country since
WWII," the US-based broker Jefferies told its clients. Goldman Sachs
said the opening of Shanghai to foreign investors was an opportunity
"simply too big to ignore," adding: "The scheme essentially ... creates
the world's second-largest equity market by market cap," second only to
the New York Stock Exchange.
None of this, however, will satiate the appetites of the US finance
houses, or end the intensifying US economic, strategic and military
pressure on China. Washington is demanding nothing less than the
overturning of all restrictions that stand in the way of US imperialism
subjugating China.
The APEC summit, which traditionally focuses on trade and investment,
will be followed later this week by an Association of South East Asian
(ASEAN) conference in Burma (Myanmar). There Obama will further
encourage ASEAN members, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines, to
pursue territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea.
Next weekend, during a G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia, Obama will
deliver what the White House described as a major speech on "US
leadership in the Asia-Pacific." No advance details of the speech have
been provided, but it is certain to mark a further escalation of
Washington's anti-China "pivot," which Obama first formally unveiled in
an address to the Australian parliament in 2011.
(2) US-Japan conflicts stall Obama's Trans-Pacific economic pact
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/28/tppa-o28.html
By Mike Head 28 October 2014
Week-long negotiations in Canberra, followed by three days of
ministerial talks in Sydney last weekend, failed to break a deadlock
between the American and Japanese governments over the proposed
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP is a treaty being aggressively pushed by the Obama
administration to establish unchallenged economic hegemony in the
Asia-Pacific. The failure of the talks to make any progress toward
finalising it, despite intense US pressure, is another measure of rising
economic and geo-strategic tensions globally, not just between the US,
China and Russia, but also between the US and its major imperialist
rivals, notably Japan.
Four years after the former Democratic Party of Japan government first
indicated its readiness to join the TPP, and 18 months after the present
Liberal Democratic Party government said it would sign up to the treaty,
no agreement is in sight. Bitter disputes continue between the US and
Japan over access to each other's agricultural and auto markets, which
is just part of a wider agenda of battering down barriers to US trade
and investment.
"There is no prospect for an agreement on market access at the moment,"
Japanese Economics Minister Akira Amari told a news conference in
Sydney. After meeting with US Trade Representative Michael Froman on
Monday morning on the margin of the plenary session, Amari declared:
"The problems left are extremely difficult and we cannot solve them easily."
President Barack Obama said this year he wanted to conclude the talks by
the time he travels to Asia next month. But Amari, when asked whether a
TPP summit meeting would take place in Beijing, on the sidelines of the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in November, said nothing
of that sort had been discussed.
Amari's statements made a mockery of the claims by the host of the
latest round of talks, Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb, that a TPP
deal could be finalised by the end of 2014. "There is a real sense that
we are within reach of the finish line," Robb claimed. Alongside Froman,
the Australian minister pushed hard for the talks to avoid missing a
deadline set by Obama, for the third year in a row.
The official statement issued by the representatives of the 12 TPP
countries insisted that "we have made significant progress" and that a
treaty was "crystallising." Such claims, however, have been made in
previous TPP communiqués.
Even Robb conceded that "difficult decisions" remained outstanding. He
mentioned intellectual property, state-owned enterprises and "other
areas," on top of the US-Japan market access disputes. No details were
provided, in keeping with the secrecy surrounding the entire TPP
process, which is being conducted by government and hundreds of
corporate lobbyists behind the backs of the population.
Without agreement between Washington and Tokyo, the TPP will be an
abject failure. Together the two countries constitute about 90 percent
of the gross domestic product of the negotiating partners. The TPP talks
also involve Australia, Canada, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam,
New Zealand, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
The TPP, first conceived in 2003 by Singapore, New Zealand and Chile,
was literally taken over by the Obama administration in 2009. It became
an essential component of Washington's military and strategic "pivot" to
Asia to combat China, which is effectively excluded from the TPP.
More fundamentally, the TPP seeks to reshape the entire "economic
architecture" of the Asia-Pacific region in the interests of Wall Street
finance capital and the largest US corporations. In the words of Obama's
former National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, the TPP, combined with a
similar treaty in Europe, is about "writing the rules that will govern
the global economy for the next century."
While presented as a "free trade" pact, the TPP's 29 chapters go far
beyond traditional trade issues. Apart from tariffs and trade barriers,
the TPP is aimed at tearing down all legal, regulatory and government
impediments to American investment throughout the region, so that every
aspect of economic and social life is restructured in line with the
profit requirements of US finance houses and transnationals.
In Japan's case, this means not just demolishing the country's tariffs
on politically sensitive farm products--rice, wheat, beef and pork,
dairy and sugar--but gaining access to other lucrative sectors of the
Japan economy.
A US Trade Representative document this year listed "barriers" that the
US wants dismantled in a long list of key industries. These include
Japan Post, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, legal
services, education, military contracts, airlines, ports, public works
construction contracts, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
For months, Obama and his envoys have publicly cajoled Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe and his government to give way. Last month, US Trade
Representative Froman wrote an opinion piece for the London-based
Financial Times accusing Japan of jeopardising the TPP. This was after
talks in Washington ended in acrimony, with Amari, his Japanese
counterpart walking out.
Froman declared that the stakes were "high" for Japan, saying it was
reneging on promises to pursue a "bold vision" for the TPP as a key
component of Abe's "third arrow" of structural economic reform. Froman
urged Abe to stand firm against unnamed "vested interests" in Japan.
Obama himself then phoned Abe, urging him to be "bold" in the TPP
negotiations, insisting that their partnership was the cornerstone of US
engagement with the region. This was followed by a visit by US Commerce
Secretary Penny Pritzker to meet with Abe to reiterate the message.
These thinly veiled warnings about the harm to US-Japan relations have
failed to produce any agreement. This points to an increasing
assertiveness by Abe's government, and not just domestic resistance by
"vested interests" to his "third arrow" agenda.
This third plank of "Abenomics," unveiled in July, consists of a
far-reaching program of more than 200 pro-market restructuring measures
that will undercut some protected sections of business and also make
deep inroads into the social position of the Japanese working class.
Abe took the decision, in March 2013, to sign up to the TPP, despite any
agreement to scrap agricultural tariffs threatening to shatter the rural
base of his Liberal Democratic Party, as a means of pursuing this
aggressive pro-market offensive to end two decades of economic stagnation.
Since taking office nearly two years ago, Abe has closely aligned
himself with Obama's "pivot," but he has also used the rising tensions
with China to push for Japan's re-militarisation, including by
"reinterpreting" the so-called pacifist constitution imposed on Japan by
the US after World War II.
While Abe remains publicly committed to the TPP, the impasse points to
underlying, intractable conflicts between the interests of US
imperialism and those of its current allies such as Japan, that have
been exacerbated by the ongoing global economic breakdown.
(3) Xi pushes China-backed free trade area (FTAAP) as rival to TPP
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKCN0IV05F20141111
Inaugurating APEC, Xi urges faster talks on China-backed free trade area
Tue Nov 11, 2014 4:43am GMT
BEIJING (Reuters) - The global economic recovery is unstable and nations
in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) bloc should speed up
free trade talks to spur growth, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on
Tuesday.
Speaking at the start of a summit of APEC leaders, Xi urged the meeting
to speed up talks on a trade liberalisation framework called the Free
Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP,) that is being pushed by Beijing.
"Currently, the global economic recovery still faces many unstable and
uncertain factors. Facing the new situation, we should further promote
regional economic integration and create a pattern of opening up that is
conducive to long-term development," Xi said.
"We should vigorously promote the Asia-Pacific free trade zone, setting
the goal, direction and roadmap and turn the vision into reality as soon
as possible."
Some see a proposed study on the FTAAP plan, which will be presented to
APEC leaders for approval, as a way to divert attention from the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement being pushed by the
United States. China is not part of the TPP, which seeks to establish a
free-trade bloc stretching from Vietnam to Chile and Japan, encompassing
about 800 million people and almost 40 percent of the global economy.
China has not been enthusiastic about the TPP, fearing that it is being
used by Washington as a way to either force it to open markets by
signing up or else isolate it from other regional economies as trade is
diverted to TPP signatories.
The TPP is widely seen as the economic backbone of U.S. President Barack
Obama's "pivot" to Asia, what some experts view as an attempt to balance
China's rise by establishing a larger U.S. presence in the region,
including military assets.
Xi was quoted by state news agency Xinhua on Monday as saying that FTAAP
"does not go against existing free trade arrangements which are
potential pathways to realise FTAAP's goals".
He said APEC's 21 economies should play a leading and coordinating role,
break all sorts of shackles and usher in a new round of opening up,
communication and integration. [...]
(4) Japanese and Chinese leaders meet in Beijing, but antagonism remains
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/11/jpch-n11.html
Japanese and Chinese leaders hold first meeting in Beijing
By Ben McGrath 11 November 2014
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping met
for the first time on Monday on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing. Xi had previously refused
to meet with Abe since the two came to power in November and December
2012 respectively.
The meeting was a cold affair at the Great Hall of the People, lasting
less than 30 minutes. The two exchanged a stiff handshake for the
cameras before sitting down for talks. "I believe that not only our
Asian neighbors but many other countries have long hoped that Japan and
China hold talks," Abe said after the meeting. "We finally lived up to
their expectations and made a first step to improve our ties."
Abe said he and Xi discussed setting up a hotline, supposedly to prevent
clashes in the East China Sea over a cluster of five islands known as
the Senkaku Islands in Japan and the Diaoyu Islands in China. Xi, in
response, placed responsibility for the chilly relations squarely on
Tokyo, calling on Japan to do more to "enhance mutual trust."
A comment by China's state-owned Xinhua news agency on Monday night was
more explicit. "The onus is primarily on Abe," it said. "It is Tokyo
that cast the ice spell on China-Japan relations; it is also Tokyo that
called for the Xi-Abe meeting. Now that Abe has talked the talk, he now
needs to walk the walk."
Earlier, it seemed that China had rejected the possibility of a summit
between Abe and Xi. A Xinhua commentary on November 3 stated that while
Xi would receive Abe, "that does not necessarily mean Abe's long-sought
formal talks with Xi during APEC would come true, which demands Abe
extend good faith and take real action to create the proper atmosphere."
China had demanded that Abe cease visiting the notorious Yasukuni war
shrine--seen as a glorification of Japan's militarist past--and admit
that a territorial dispute exists over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands,
something the Japanese government has refused to do. Abe has not
publically indicated any change in his policies.
In the months leading up to the APEC meeting, Abe seemed to take a more
conciliatory stance toward China. He avoided visits to Yasukuni,
although ministers in his government went to the shrine in August and
October. In December 2013, Abe became the first sitting prime minister
to visit the shrine since Junichiro Koizumi in 2006. The shrine
symbolically inters soldiers who died in Japanese wars, including 14
convicted, class-A war criminals from World War II.
The Chinese and South Korean governments have used the visits to the
shrine to whip up anti-Japanese nationalism at home. In both countries
many people still have first-hand memories of the crimes committed by
Japanese imperialism during the 1930s and 1940s.
Abe's meeting with Xi should in no way be interpreted as a sign of an
easing of Tokyo's agenda of reviving Japanese militarism. Behind the
scenes, the Obama administration pushed for Abe to meet Xi because it
feared that his confrontational stance toward Beijing was beginning to
cut across Washington's own interests in the region.
Tensions between China and Japan have flared over the Diaoyu/Senkaku
islands since November 2012, when Japan nationalized three of the
islands. Aircraft and vessels from the two countries regularly confront
each other in the area, risking the danger of conflict. According to the
Japanese government, 110 Chinese ships entered waters around the islands
in September, to which the Japanese coast guard has responded.
US Secretary of State John Kerry stated on Saturday, before the APEC
meeting: "Any steps that the two countries can take to improve the
relationship and reduce tensions is helpful, not just to the two
countries, but helpful to the region."
The US in fact inflamed tensions by promising to defend Japan in any
military conflict with China over the islands. Washington has
strengthened military ties with other countries, including Japan, the
Philippines and Australia, as part of its "pivot" to Asia, a strategy
aimed at asserting US hegemony in the region and encircling and
preparing for war against China.
At the same time, however, the Obama administration does not want to be
drawn into a war with China on behalf of Japanese imperialism, in which
the agenda would be set by Tokyo. While the Senkakus have been the
touchstone in Tokyo for whipping up Japanese nationalism, the small,
uninhabited, rocky outcrops in the East China Sea have no political or
strategic significance for US imperialism.
Washington hoped that a conciliatory move by Abe in Beijing might also
create a better environment in which the Japanese and South Korean
governments can patch up their relationship in line with US interests.
One point of friction is the disputed islands known as Dokdo in South
Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
In a November 7 article, Ralph Cossa of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a think-tank with close links to the US defence
establishment, called on Abe to acknowledge that a dispute exists over
the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Cossa wrote: "As an added benefit, such a
statement would provide additional reassurance that Japan will not use
force against Dokdo. One would hope that Seoul would focus on the
positive parts of this message and not the repeated sovereignty claim."
Abe has signaled his readiness for a summit with South Korea's Park
Geun-hye, who has so far refused to meet him. Relations between the two
key US allies in the region took a turn for the worse in 2012 when Lee
Myung-bak became the first sitting South Korean president to visit the
disputed Dokdo islets.
The animosity between Tokyo and Seoul is a concern for Washington, as it
has prevented them from developing closer military ties in support of
the US "pivot." In 2012, the two governments were on the verge of
signing a military intelligence sharing agreement at Washington's
encouragement. The deal was derailed minutes before it was to be signed
after opposition erupted to the Lee government's attempt to push it
through without informing the National Assembly, South Korea's main
legislative body.
After Park came to power in February 2013, she would not meet with Abe
one-on-one. Obama was forced to hold a trilateral summit in March to
bring the two leaders together. Obama's selection of Mark Lippert as the
new ambassador to South Korea is viewed as a means to pressure Seoul to
align itself more closely with US military plans. Lippert is well
connected to the Pentagon and was Obama's chief strategist for East
Asian affairs.
(5) TPP & TAP Lies - Paul Craig Roberts
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:03:36 -0700
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39936.htm
The Lie Machine
Paul Craig Roberts
October 12, 2014 "ICH" - I have come to the conclusion that the West is
a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider,
for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the
Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership.
These so-called “partnerships” are in fact vehicles by which US
corporations make themselves immune to the sovereign laws of foreign
countries in which they do business. A sovereign country that attempts
to enforce its laws against an American corporation can be sued by the
corporation for “restraint of trade.” For example, if Monsanto wants to
sell GMO seeds in France or US corporations wish to sell
genetically-modified foods in France, and France enforces its laws
against GMOs, the Transatlantic Trade Partnership allows France to be
sued in jurisdictions outside the courts of France for “restraint of
trade.” In other words, preventing the entry into France of a prohibited
product constitutes restraint of trade.
This is the reason that the US has insisted that the Transatlantic and
Transpacific Partnerships be totally secretive and negotiated outside
the democratic process. Not even the US Congress has been permitted
knowledge of the negotiations.
Obviously, the Europeans and Asians who are agreeing with the terms of
these “partnerships” are the bought-and-paid-for agents of the US
corporations. If the partnerships go through, the only law in Europe and
Asia will be US law. The European and Asian government officials who
agree to the hegemony of US corporations over the laws of their
countries will be so handsomely paid that they could enter the realm of
the One Percent.
It is interesting to compare the BBC’s coverage (October 10) with that
of RT (October 11). The BBC reports that the aim of the Transatlantic
Partnership is to remove “barriers to bilateral commerce” and to
stimulate more trade and investment, economic growth and employment. The
BBC does not report that the removal of barriers includes barriers
against GMO products.
Everyone knows that the European Commission is corrupt. Who would be
surprised if its members hope to be enriched by the American
corporations? Little wonder the European Commission declared that
concerns that the Transatlantic partnership would impact the sovereignty
of countries is misplaced. http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29572475
RT, which is restrained in reporting truth because it operates inside
the US, still manages to come to the point in its headline: “No TTIP:
Mass protests slam US-EU trade deal as ‘Corporate power grab’.”
All over Europe people are in the streets in mass rallies against secret
agreements by their corrupt governments for Washington to take over
their lives and businesses. RT reports that “social networks have been
mobilized for a mass campaign that has been calling on Europeans and
Americans to take action against ‘the biggest corporate power grab in a
decade’.”
RT quotes a leader of the demonstration in Berlin who says the secret
agreements “give corporations more rights they’ve ever had in history.”
As we all know, corporations already have too many rights.
“Protests are planned in 22 countries across Europe–marches, rallies and
other public events–in over 1,000 locations in UK, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Greece, Netherlands, Poland, The Czech Republic and
Scandinavian countries.”
Did you hear about this latest American corporate power grab from Fox
“News,” CNN, New York Times, London Times, ABC? Of course not. Did you
hear about the massive protests against it? Of course not. You only hear
what the interest groups permit you to hear.
RT reports that the main aim of the international protests is “to
reclaim democracy” and to put an end to the secret deals that are
destroying life for everyone but the American corporations,
organizations now regarded worldwide as the epitome of evil.
http://rt.com/news/195144-europe-protests-stop-ttip/
These phony “trade agreements” are advocated as “free trade removal of
tariffs,” but what they remove are the sovereignties of countries.
America is already ruled by corporations. If these faux “trade
agreements” go through, Europe and Asia will also be ruled by American
corporations.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal
702 Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as poorest 3.5 billion
Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as
poorest 3.5 billion
Newsletter published on 12 November 2014
(1) Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as
poorest 3.5 billion
(2) Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
(3) Big 4 Accounting firms play a key role in Tax Havens
(4) Multinationals route profits through Luxembourg to reduce their taxes
(5) US Election: Low turnout as Voters wake up to Rigged System
(6) The two parties are instruments of the same Financial Oligarchy
(7) G20 leaders in the mood to act on tax avoidance after Luxembourg leaks
(1) Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as
poorest 3.5 billion
https://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2014/052714.htm
Economic Inclusion and Financial Integrity—an Address to the Conference
on Inclusive Capitalism
By Christine Lagarde
Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
London, May 27, 2014
As prepared for delivery
Good morning. What a great privilege to be here among such illustrious
guests to discuss such an important topic.
Let me thank Lady Lynn de Rothschild and the Inclusive Capitalism
Initiative for convening today’s event. I would also like to recognize
the great civic leaders here today—His Royal Highness, the Prince of
Wales; President Clinton, and Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of the City of
London. [...]
The 85 richest people in the world, who could fit into a single London
double-decker, control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global
population– that is 3.5 billion people. [...]
(2) Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
http://www.alternet.org/economy/shocking-new-report-superrich-have-grabbed-half-worlds-assets
Shocking New Report: Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
Lynn Parramore
October 21, 2014
According to a new report, the richest one percent have got their mitts
on almost half the world's assets. Think that’s the end of the story?
Think again. This is only the beginning.
The “Global Annual Wealth Report [3],” freshly released by investment
giant Credit Suisse, analyzes the shocking trend of growing wealth
inequality around the world. What the researchers find is that global
wealth has increased every year since 2008, and that personal wealth
seems to be rising at the fastest rate ever recorded, much of it driven
by strong equity markets. But the benefits of this growth have largely
been channeled to those who are already affluent. While the restaurant
workers in America struggled to achieve wages of $10 an hour for their
labor, those invested in equities saw their wealth soar without lifting
a finger. So it goes around the world.
The bottom half of the world’s people now own less than 1 percent of
total wealth, and they’re struggling to hold onto even that minuscule
portion. On the other hand, the wealthiest 10 percent have accumulated a
staggering 87 percent of global assets. The top percentile has 48.2
percent of the world wealth. For now.
One of the scary things about the wealth of the supperich is what French
economist Thomas Piketty pointed out in his best-selling book, Capital
in the 21st Century. Once they’ve got a big chunk of wealth, their share
will get bigger even if they sit by and do absolutely nothing. Piketty
sums up this economic reality in a simple and horrifying formula: r > g.
Basically, this means that when rate of return on wealth is greater than
the overall rate of growth of the economy, as it has nearly always been
throughout history, the rich will grow inevitably richer and the poor
poorer unless there is some kind of intervention, like higher taxes on
wealth, for example. If r is less than g, the assets of the
super-wealthy will erode, but if r is greater than g, you eventually get
the explosion of gigantic inherited fortunes and dynasties.
This is happening now: If you look at the Forbes 400 [4] list of the
wealthiest people in America, you see a lot more inherited fortunes in
the upper ranks than you did a couple of decades ago, when the policies
that held inequality at bay began to get dismantled. In today’s top 10,
there are more scions of the Walton family than entrepreneurs like Bill
Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. These people have essentially done nothing of
value for society, and yet their undue influence shapes our political
landscape with the wave of a wad of cash.
There have been moments in history when things were not so lopsided.
During the post-war period, inequality was contained because governments
made sure their rich didn’t accumulate at such alarming rates by doing
things like taxing their estates at a high rate. At the same time, they
created policies to lift the incomes of the less well-off and allow them
to have some basic security. But that’s an exception in history. Most of
the time, this kind of intervention did not happen, and so the rich kept
gobbling more and accumulating more power to keep it that way until one
of two things happened — a revolution or some kind of catastrophe or
disruptive event, like a war, shook things up.
As the Credit Suisse report states:
“[Wealth inequality] has been the case throughout most of human history,
with wealth ownership often equating with land holdings, and wealth more
often acquired via inheritance or conquest rather than talent or hard
work. However, a combination of factors caused wealth inequality to
trend downwards in high income countries during much of the 20th
century, suggesting that a new era had emerged. That downward trend now
appears to have stalled, and possibly gone into reverse.”
That’s right. We’re on a turbo-charged ride back to the days of Downton
Abbey. Piketty warns that we’re in the early stages of reverting right
back to periods of massive inequality, like 19th-century Britain or
18th-century France, where great dynastic fortunes ruled and everybody
else fought for scraps.
What the statistics and formulas don’t show is the kind of human
suffering that results from this kind of extreme inequality. While the
global elite zip around the world in private jets and watch their stock
portfolios expand on computer screens from within their gated mansions,
the bottom half stays awake at night trying to think of how to pay for
medicine for a sick child. The things that give life dignity and
meaning, like a quality education, a decent job, and the security of
knowing you have a roof over your head and a doctor to care for you when
you are ill grow further and further out of reach. Anxiety never leaves
because one unforeseen mishap can push you down into poverty, and if
you’re already there, you spend much of your time searching, often
fruitlessly, for a way out.
But there’s a little bit of anxiety percolating at the top, too. On the
June cover [5] of the conservative magazine American Spectator, a
cartoon shows an incensed mob looking on as a monocled fatcat is led to
a bloody guillotine — a scene evoking the Reign of Terror during the
French Revolution. The caption reads, “The New Class Warfare: Thomas
Piketty’s intellectual cover for confiscation.” In the story that
accompanies the image, James Pierson warns of revolution and a growing
class of suffering people who want to punish the rich and take away
their toys.
That would be one way to address things. Another would be the
recognition that inequality is extremely destabilizing and dangerous,
and that non-violent interventions are possible, as we saw in America
with the New Deal. Things like robust tax reform, unions, regulation,
changes in corporate governance and CEO pay, affordable education, jobs
programs, expansion of Social Security and universal healthcare.
Or we could just do things the old-fashioned way and wait for a disaster
even bigger than the meltdown of 2007-'08. In that case, fasten your
seatbelts. This ride could get very rough.
(3) Big 4 Accounting firms play a key role in Tax Havens
http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/big-4-audit-firms-play-big-role-offshore-murk
Big 4 Audit Firms Play Big Role in Offshore Murk
By Michael Hudson, Sasha Chavkin and Bart Mos
November 5, 2014, 4:00 pm
KEY FINDINGS
- Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach, Deutsche Bank, Abbott Laboratories and
nearly 340 other companies have secured secret deals from Luxembourg
that allowed many of them to slash their global tax bills.
- PricewaterhouseCoopers has helped multinational companies obtain at
least 548 tax rulings in Luxembourg from 2002 to 2010. These legal
secret deals feature complex financial structures designed to create
drastic tax reductions. The rulings provide written assurance that
companies’ tax-saving plans will be viewed favorably by Luxembourg
authorities.
- Companies have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through
Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes. Some firms have
enjoyed effective tax rates of less than 1 percent on the profits
they’ve shuffled into Luxembourg.
- Many of the tax deals exploited international tax mismatches that
allowed companies to avoid taxes both in Luxembourg and elsewhere
through the use of so-called hybrid loans.
- In many cases Luxembourg subsidiaries handling hundreds of millions
of dollars in business maintain little presence and conduct little
economic activity in Luxembourg. One popular address – 5, rue Guillaume
Kroll – is home to more than 1,600 companies.
(4) Multinationals route profits through Luxembourg to reduce their taxes
http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/big-4-audit-firms-play-big-role-offshore-murk
Luxembourg Leaks: Global Companies' Secrets Exposed
Capping a six-month investigation, the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners are publishing a
secret cache of leaked tax documents that show how multinational
corporations throughout the globe routed profits through tiny and
wealthy Luxembourg to reduce their taxes.
Pepsi, IKEA, FedEx and 340 other international companies have secured
secret deals from the landlocked European duchy, that has been called a
“magical fairyland” for brand-name corporations seeking to drastically
reduce tax bills.
(5) US Election: Low turnout as Voters wake up to Rigged System
From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@lorinna.net>
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2014 21:40:19 +1100
Subject: Mike Whitney - US Elections: Obama Leads Democrats to Midterm
Massacre
US Elections: Obama Leads Democrats to Midterm Massacre
The Republican Victory: Grab a Pitchfork, President Flim-Flam Leads
Democrats to Mid-term Massacre
By Mike Whitney
Global Research, November 07, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-republican-victory-grab-a-pitchfork-president-flim-flam-leads-democrats-to-midterm-massacre/5412554
“The Republican victory does not represent a shift by the American
population to the right, but demonstrates the bankrupt and reactionary
character of the Democratic Party and the mass disillusionment with the
Obama administration. In the absence of any progressive alternative to
the two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, the majority of
potential voters stayed home. Voter turnout hit another record low, with
only 38 percent going to the polls….Voter participation by young people
fell particularly sharply. Barely one-third of eligible voters went to
the polls in California, the most populous state.” Patrick Martin,
Republicans win control of Senate in US congressional elections, World
Socialist Web Site
“You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it
out six inches, and say you’re making progress.” Malcolm X
The White House has denied claims that the midterm elections were a
referendum on Barack Obama, but the polling data shows that they were.
According to a CBS News exit poll:
“Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said their opinion of the
president influenced their vote… 34 percent said they wanted to make a
statement in opposition to Mr. Obama, while 20 percent said they voted
in support of him.”
Those differences were more stark among Republican voters “61 percent
(of whom) said they cast ballots to take a stand against the current
administration. (Only) Thirty-five percent of those who voted for GOP
candidates said Mr. Obama didn’t play a role in their decisions at the
polling places.” (2014 midterm elections look like a referendum on
Obama, CBS News)
There’s no doubt that antipathy towards Obama played a significant role
in Tuesday night’s bloodbath. Even so, White House Press Secretary Josh
Earnest insists that, “Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on
the name that’s on the ballot, not the name that’s not….It’s up to those
individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions
for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used
to their benefit in the elections.”
In other words, the Democratic candidates that went down in flames on
Tuesday, can only blame themselves. While that might be a good way to
deflect responsibility, it certainly doesn’t square with the facts. Just
get a load of these exit poll results from Forbes:
“45% of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the
country. It was the top issue of four listed on the exit poll ballot.
Voters were generally pessimistic about it. Only 1% checked the box that
said the economy’s condition was “excellent.” 70% said it was not so
good or poor. 78% were worried about its direction in the next year. In
another question, voters split pretty evenly: around a third of voters
said it was getting better, getting worse, and staying about the same.
More voters expected the life for the next generation of Americans to be
worse rather than better, 48 to 22%.” (Election Results From A To Z: An
Exit Poll Report, Forbes)
What a damning survey. What a damning indictment of Obama. The vast
majority of the people think the economy still stinks and that living
standards for their kids are going to get a whole lot worse. And you
wonder why the Dems got their heads handed to them on Tuesday? It’s
because they failed on the number one issue, that’s why.
But the implosion of the Democratic party pales in comparison to the
bigger issue, that is, that more and more people are dropping off the
radar and out of the system. THAT is significant. Take a look at this
from NPR’s All Things Considered on Wednesday:
Robert Siegel: “…as of today, according to numbers from the Associated
Press, a bit over 83 million people voted. As a share of the
voting-eligible population, that is 36.6 percent … if the national
turnout rate doesn’t reach 38.1 percent, it would be the lowest turnout
since the midterm elections of 1942. And as Michael McDonald points out,
that was in the middle of the Second World War.” (Midterm Elections May
Have Had Record Low Turnout NPR All Things Considered)
Now you might think that the bigshots in Washington don’t care if you
vote or not, but you’re wrong. They do care. You see, they put together
this shiny-new system called “democracy” that conceals their looting
operations behind a masque of “public approval”. That approval comes in
the form of balloting which they see as a necessary component for
keeping the serf-sheeple in line and for shifting ever-larger amounts of
the nation’s wealth to their criminal friends on Wall Street. Only now,
it looks like the curtain has slipped a bit, and more people are opting
out of this Potemkin-charade of “representative government”. Check this
out from the World Socialist Web Site:
“Voter turnout was at record lows, with two-thirds of those eligible to
vote staying away from the polls. This mass abstention was particularly
pronounced among the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working
class—those most disillusioned by the empty promises of Obama’s 2008 and
2012 presidential campaigns.
In Michigan, for example, voter turnout in Detroit was only 31 percent,
well below the 40 percent level predicted by city officials. This
shortfall accounts for the entire margin of defeat for the Democratic
candidate for governor, Mark Schauer, running against Republican
incumbent Rick Snyder…
Perhaps the most revealing finding in the exit polls was that two-thirds
of those who cast ballots Tuesday viewed the US economic system as
deeply unfair and rigged in favor of the wealthy. There was evidence in
the exit polls that millions are losing faith in the capitalist system
altogether, and not merely expressing discontent with the conditions of
economic slump that have prevailed since the financial crash of 2008.”
(Republicans, Obama prepare post-election escalation of war, social
attacks, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site
People are throwing in the towel, they’ve had it up to here with this
crummy system that only delivers for the 1 percent. Everyone knows that
the country is ruled by an oligarchy of racketeers who don’t give a rip
about anything except pumping up the bottom line and stiff-arming
working people. Why participate in a system like that?
And don’t give me that hogwash about the “differences between the two
parties”.
What a laugh. Did you notice how Obama snuggled up to Mitch McConnell
just hours after the Dems took their biggest shellacking in history?
It’s all a show. These guys are all in bed together. They don’t care
about you and me. It’s a joke.
Just look at the cynical game the Dems are playing to convince their
constituency that they actually have “heartfelt convictions” and that
they’re true liberals. They’re always blabbering about same sex marriage
and “a woman’s right to choose”. Why do you figure that is?
It’s because their corporate Sugar daddies tell them to steer-clear of
any issue that might cost them some of their precious money, like higher
wages, better benefits, job security, health care, pensions, unions etc;
all the things the Dems say they care about, but never lift a finger to
support.
Remember how President Dipstick flew over Wisconsin blowing kisses to
the people below while Scott Walker was busy dismantling collective
bargaining rights for public workers?
That’s the Dems attitude towards working people in a nutshell. That’s
why they’re all about gay rights and abortion. It’s because they threw
working people under the bus 30 fu**ing years ago. Abortion is the last
thing they can hang their hat on. It’s pathetic. Here’s how Joseph
Kishore sums it up over at the WSWS:
“The Democratic strategy of appealing to affluent layers of the middle
class on the basis of identity politics while working with the
Republicans to step up attacks on workers’ jobs, wages and living
standards produced an electoral disaster. In a contradictory way,
reflecting a system monopolized by two right-wing parties of big
business, the election showed that appeals on the basis of race, gender
and sexuality move only a small fraction of the population, while the
broad masses of people are driven by more fundamental class
issues—issues on which the Democrats have nothing to offer…
Underlying these processes is a profound crisis—not only of the
Democratic Party, but of the entire political system. Both parties
represent the interests of a tiny layer of the corporate and financial
elite in alliance with the military-intelligence apparatus. Beyond the
confines of the top 5 or 10 percent of the population, the state
confronts a working class that is angry, dissatisfied and increasingly
hostile.”
(The Democratic Party implosion, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site)
The system is in crisis, and the reason should be obvious to anyone
willing to pull his head out of the sand long enough to see what’s
really going on. It’s because capitalism doesn’t deliver the goods. It’s
that simple. Everything is stacked in favor of the moneybags
bloodsuckers on top. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. Have you
noticed how Maserati sales are threw the roof?
It’s true. America’s a great place if you got dough. And if you don’t,
well, then you might want to get yourself a nice, comfy cardboard box
and a dry-spot by the river.
Is it any wonder why people under 30 have checked out entirely? They’re
not buying this “capitalism is wonderful” horsecrap. They feel the sting
of this system every damn day. Do you really think that a college grad
with an MBA in engineering who’s living in his parent’s crawlspace,
who’s wracked up a heaping $65,000 in student loans, and who has over
200 job rejections stacked a mile-high on his desk, gets up every
morning thinking, “God I’m glad I live in America. Isn’t it swell to
live in a country where everyone has a chance to get ahead?”
Right. These people have already quit the system and they’re not coming
back. Among young voters (aged 18-29) only 13 percent cast ballots on
Tuesday. There’s your ringing endorsement of capitalism in one dazzling
data-point: 13 freaking percent. That’s a system that has out-lived its
shelf-life if you ask me.
One last thing: We should give a hat tip to some of the people who
figured out what Obama was all about from the get go, like the editors
of Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Counterpunch
has been skewering President Flim Flam for more 8 years now, even when
the liberal “thought police” blasted anyone who as much as uttered a
cross word about him. (I wonder how many of those die-hard Ombamabots
have the stones to admit now that they were wrong? Not many, I’ll bet.)
Anyway, take a look at this Cockburn article I dug up from the CP
archives. It pretty well sums up the editorial position of the magazine…
And it was written back in November, 2003:
“In these last days I’ve been scraping around, trying to muster a single
positive reason to encourage a vote for… Obama-Biden, as opposed to the
McCain-Palin ticket?…
In substantive terms Obama’s run has been the negation of almost every
decent progressive principle, a negation achieved with scarcely a bleat
of protest from the progressives seeking to hold him to account. The
Michael Moores stay silent. Abroad, Obama stands for imperial
renaissance. He has groveled before the Israel lobby and pandered to the
sourest reflexes of the cold war era. At home he has crooked the knee to
bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the
nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is even more popular
with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of
the candidates with K Street lobbyists. He has been fearless in
offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful.”…
“Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a
“reform” candidate so firmly by the windpipe.” (Change You Can See,
Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch)
Cockburn knew that Obama was a fake and that the Democratic leadership
had no intention of changing anything. The plan was to crank the Bush
agenda up to full-throttle; expand the wars, increase the surveillance,
eviscerate civil liberties, and shift more of the nation’s wealth to
their feral-tycoon bosses on Wall Street. That was the plan and that’s
what they did.
Tuesday’s electoral meltdown was just blowback from the many rank and
file Dems who were either too mad to vote the party ticket or too
distraught to even drag themselves to the polling booths. And therein
lies the silver lining to this mess, which is that people are
disillusioned, frightened and angry. They hate Wall Street, the media,
the do-nothing Congress, and the sell-out-loser Democrats. They want
change and they’re willing to move further to the right or left to get it.
That should be fertile ground for even the most fainthearted
revolutionary. There’s no reason why the public’s frustration and can’t
be channeled into more productive activity, like a general strike, a
mass exodus from the two-party duopoly, or a thundering march on the
Capital.
Why waste all that rage on whining and handwringing? The system is
broken. Deal with it.
Organize. Grab a pitchfork. Do something!
(6) The two parties are instruments of the same Financial Oligarchy
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/06/elec-n06.html
Republicans, Obama prepare post-election escalation of war, social attacks
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2014
In the wake of Tuesday’s electoral drubbing of the Democratic Party, the
victorious Republicans and the Obama White House have begun an elaborate
and highly orchestrated political charade. Amid talk of compromise and
finding “common ground,” what is being organized in Washington is a
gang-up of two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties against the
working class.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Obama made
media appearances only an hour apart Wednesday. Each pledged to
collaborate with the other.
The American people “have chosen divided government” for the next two
years, McConnell said. “We all have the same goal” of creating jobs and
improving the living standards of the American people, Obama
reciprocated, pledging to “get stuff done” with the Republicans, who
will control both houses of Congress.
McConnell warned Obama not to issue an executive order exempting
millions of undocumented workers from deportation, calling it “waving a
red flag in front of a bull.” At his press conference, Obama reiterated
a previous pledge—already postponed multiple times—to take executive
action along those lines. But behind the scenes, talks will begin on an
immigration measure along the lines demanded by corporate America to
guarantee a secure supply of low-wage, brutally exploited labor.
At his press conference in Louisville, Kentucky, McConnell reassured
Wall Street that there would be no repetition of the 2013 government
shutdown that roiled the financial markets. “There will be no government
shutdowns and no default on the national debt,” he said.
Obama held out the prospect of an agreement on a huge tax break for
corporations that have $2 trillion in profits stashed in overseas
accounts to avoid income taxes, in effect rewarding them for tax
evasion. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have already expressed
support for such a deal.
The president revealed that his first post-election meeting with the
congressional leadership from both parties, set for Friday at the White
House, will include an extensive briefing by General Lloyd Austin,
commander of US military forces in the Middle East, on the status of the
war in Syria and Iraq against the Sunni fundamentalist group Islamic State.
He said he would seek congressional passage of an Authorization for the
Use of Military Force similar to the resolutions pushed through by the
Bush administration before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
indicating that he expected support for the measure from the incoming
Republican majorities in both houses.
The maneuvers between the two big-business parties were unfolding as
overnight ballot-counting confirmed the dimensions of the Republican
sweep—and demonstrated the mass abstention from voting on the part of
the great majority of working people.
The Republicans took control of the US Senate, taking as of now 52 seats
out of 100, a gain of at least seven seats, with two more seats, in
Alaska and Louisiana, likely to fall into their hands. Of the 36 Senate
seats at stake Tuesday, the two parties had targeted ten held by
Democrats and three by Republicans as potentially vulnerable. Of these
13, Republicans won ten, Democrats only one, and Republicans lead in the
two still undecided states.
Republican Dan Sullivan led Democratic Senator Mark Begich in Alaska,
although there were still many remote areas not yet reporting. Begich
would be the fourth Democratic senator defeated for reelection. Mary
Landrieu of Louisiana would be the fifth. She is expected to lose a
runoff December 6 after winning 42 percent of the vote in an
eight-candidate primary Tuesday, while the two top Republicans took 52
percent between them.
In the House of Representatives, the Republicans added between 13 and 19
seats to their majority, depending on the outcome of a half dozen
too-close-to-call races in New York, Arizona and California. The
Democratic debacle had two components: a huge decline in turnout in
heavily Democratic states like New York, Illinois and California; and a
continuing decline in southern states and Appalachia.
The only remaining Democratic-held seats in the six states of the Deep
South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and
Arkansas) are in black-majority districts. Not a single Democrat holds a
congressional seat in the Appalachian coal-mining region (southwest
Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, southwest Virginia,
eastern Kentucky and Tennessee).
The rump Democratic Party caucus in the House, the smallest in 86 years,
is concentrated in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, with a few urban
areas and industrial centers in the Midwest. If one starts in Richmond,
Virginia and proceeds west, one can travel 3,000 miles to Oakland,
California before encountering a congressional district held by a Democrat.
The Cook Political Report summed up the congressional vote in these
terms: “Plain and simple, the story in House races was an epic turnout
collapse and motivational deficit.”
The Democratic performance was so abysmal that in New York City,
Republican Congressman Michael Grimm won reelection despite being under
indictment on 20 felony counts relating to a restaurant business he owns
(and despite his well-publicized threat of violence against a journalist).
In races for state governors, Republicans won a top-heavy majority of
the 36 seats on the ballot Tuesday, including the largest and most
politically important: Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. While
a Democrat defeated the incumbent Republican governor of Pennsylvania,
Republican candidates won heavily Democratic states such as
Massachusetts and Maryland. After Tuesday, 31 of the 50 states have
Republican governors, and Republicans hold 65 state legislative chambers
compared to 23 for Democrats, with the remainder tied or undecided.
Despite the sweeping character of its electoral triumph, however, the
Republican Party has no mandate from voters for its right-wing program
of tax cuts for business, destruction of social programs, and escalating
militarism.
Voter turnout was at record lows, with two-thirds of those eligible to
vote staying away from the polls. This mass abstention was particularly
pronounced among the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working
class—those most disillusioned by the empty promises of Obama’s 2008 and
2012 presidential campaigns.
In Michigan, for example, voter turnout in Detroit was only 31 percent,
well below the 40 percent level predicted by city officials. This
shortfall accounts for the entire margin of defeat for the Democratic
candidate for governor, Mark Schauer, running against Republican
incumbent Rick Snyder.
Similarly, in Wisconsin, voter turnout was at record levels for a
midterm election throughout the state, due to the sharp polarization
caused by Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attacks on public
employees. The exception was Milwaukee, the state’s largest city.
In Georgia, turnout among African-American voters was lower than in
2010, the last midterm election, demonstrating that right-wing
Democratic candidate Michelle Nunn had sparked little support in her bid
for an open Senate seat.
Exit polls showed the while many voters wished to express hostility to
the Obama administration, congressional Republicans were even more
unpopular: Some 30 percent of voters were satisfied with Obama, while
only 25 percent were satisfied with the Republicans. Within the
framework of the two-party system, however, the only alternative to
Obama was the Republicans.
Perhaps the most revealing finding in the exit polls was that two-thirds
of those who cast ballots Tuesday viewed the US economic system as
deeply unfair and rigged in favor of the wealthy. There was evidence in
the exit polls that millions are losing faith in the capitalist system
altogether, and not merely expressing discontent with the conditions of
economic slump that have prevailed since the financial crash of 2008.
While the proportion of those who viewed the economy as “not so good” or
“poor” fell from nine out of ten in 2010 to seven out of ten in 2014,
more than half now believe that the next generation will live worse than
their parents.
A waitress in Alaska interviewed in an exit poll was quoted in the New
York Times as saying: “I feel like I’m in that class of people that’s
kind of getting left behind in this whirlwind… I’m in that economic
class of people that works really, really hard and will probably never
get too far ahead, barely makes it, and kind of gets punished for it.”
Needless to say, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, controlled
by corporate interests and bound hand-and-foot to the capitalist system,
can address such class-based discontent.
The 2014 election marks the fourth time in the last five elections that
the party in power, Democratic or Republican, was thrown out of office
by voters. In 2006, the Democrats took control of the House and Senate,
in 2008 they captured the White House. In 2010, Republicans recaptured
the House and now, in 2014, they have recaptured the Senate.
These shifts from one party to the other have resolved none of the
issues facing working people, nor can they, because the two parties are
instruments of the same financial oligarchy.
(7) G20 leaders in the mood to act on tax avoidance after Luxembourg leaks
http://www.smh.com.au/national/g20-leaders-in-the-mood-to-act-on-tax-avoidance-after-luxembourg-leaks-20141107-11icy3.html
Date: November 08 2014
Tom Allard
Ahead of next weekend's G20 summit, the release of leaked documents
showing Luxembourg's facilitation of industrial scale tax avoidance by
multinational corporations could not have been better timed.
A cache of documents obtained by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, and released on Thursday, found hundreds of
companies - including Australian firms such as AMP, Macquarie Group and
Lend Lease - had funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars into
Luxembourg, slashing their tax bills in the process.
In some cases, the firms were paying effective tax rates of as little as
1 per cent.
While immense, the "Lux leaks" documents are only a portion of the tax
avoidance taking place in Luxembourg, representing only those deals
arranged by global accounting firm PwC.
And while Luxembourg is arguably the world's biggest tax haven, it
represents only a sliver of the global tax avoidance game.
By their very nature, calculating the scale of secret tax arrangements
is near impossible, but some guesstimates posit that wealth equivalent
to almost 10 per cent of global GDP - or about $US8 trillion - is
squirrelled away in tax havens.
Others say the figure is closer to $US20 trillion.
Whatever the exact extent of tax avoidance, the challenge of combating
rampant tax minimisation in the globalised, digitised economy of the
21st century is immense.
But as governments struggle to balance their budgets and deal with an
increasing number of citizens enraged by the inequity of the global tax
regime, leaders are ready to act.
Curbing tax avoidance is one of the key agenda items when world leaders
from the group of 20 large economies gather in Brisbane.
Piggybacking on work begun by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development in 2009, the G20 economies have agreed on common
reporting standards for the automatic exchange of "tax information"
between member countries.
There are also proposals to agree to disclose the true beneficial
ownership of bank accounts and trusts, although China is reportedly
resisting the move.
Either way, says Mike Callaghan, a former senior Treasury official now
with the Lowy Institute, the measures - while worthy - largely impact on
bank secrecy and money laundering.
"That's dealing mostly with individuals, not companies," Callaghan says.
The biggest problem with tax avoidance lies with multinational
corporates shifting profits, debt and income through a variety of
techniques, many of them done under a veil of secrecy or via hugely
complex but legal arrangements devised by highly paid tax lawyers.
Some 60 per cent of international transactions occur within
multinational corporations.
The problem has been magnified by the emergence of digital companies and
e-commerce, with firms such as Amazon, Microsoft. Google and Apple able
to easily book profits in low taxing jurisdictions.
The OECD "Base Erosion and Profit Shifting" project is examining how to
address the problem, amply illustrated by what's going on in Luxembourg.
Callaghan argues that real advances will be made if G20 nations pledge
to adopt an OECD recommendation and force multinationals to report on
their sales, income, debts, profits and other financial information on
a country-by-country basis, thus illuminating discrepancies between
where profits are generated and taxed.
This would ensure that the G20 finance ministers commitment that
"profits should be taxed in the place where the value is created and the
economic activities occur" is more than just rhetoric.
There is in-principle support for this OECD initiative, but a path to
concrete action would be a ground-breaking move if endorsed in the G20
leaders' summit Brisbane on November 15-16.
Many tax justice advocates argue the country-by-country financials of
multinationals should not just be shared by governments, but made
publicly available to enhance transparency.
Consumer agitation and boycotts are seen by activists as essential
weapons in forcing multinationals to change their behaviour.
In its report to the G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns in
September, the OECD declared that progress on enhancing transparency to
combat tax avoidance has been "massive".
According to Mark Zirnsak from the Australian arm of the Tax Justice
Network, momentum for global reform is gathering pace, with Australian
Treasurer Joe Hockey providing good leadership on combating the
"thievery" of tax cheats.
But Graeme Cooper, professor of taxation law at the University of Sydney
is more sceptical. He says self-interest of countries often trumps
global co-operation.
He argues that the US, for example, is not so concerned about tax
avoidance by digital giants such as Google as it helps these American
companies prosper and underpins a vibrant information technology sector
that is a growth engine of the US economy.
For tax havens, the rewards can be lucrative too.
Luxembourg, the tiny duchy nestled between France, Germany and Belgium,
is a case in point.
It has a population of less than 550,000 but has $US3.7 trillion ($4.2
trillion) in assets under management, second behind the US. It's clearly
done well out of the arrangements. Its GDP per capita is more than
$US110,000, almost twice that of the US, and the highest in the world.
poorest 3.5 billion
Newsletter published on 12 November 2014
(1) Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as
poorest 3.5 billion
(2) Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
(3) Big 4 Accounting firms play a key role in Tax Havens
(4) Multinationals route profits through Luxembourg to reduce their taxes
(5) US Election: Low turnout as Voters wake up to Rigged System
(6) The two parties are instruments of the same Financial Oligarchy
(7) G20 leaders in the mood to act on tax avoidance after Luxembourg leaks
(1) Christine Lagarde of IMF: 85 richest people own as much wealth as
poorest 3.5 billion
https://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2014/052714.htm
Economic Inclusion and Financial Integrity—an Address to the Conference
on Inclusive Capitalism
By Christine Lagarde
Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
London, May 27, 2014
As prepared for delivery
Good morning. What a great privilege to be here among such illustrious
guests to discuss such an important topic.
Let me thank Lady Lynn de Rothschild and the Inclusive Capitalism
Initiative for convening today’s event. I would also like to recognize
the great civic leaders here today—His Royal Highness, the Prince of
Wales; President Clinton, and Fiona Woolf, Lord Mayor of the City of
London. [...]
The 85 richest people in the world, who could fit into a single London
double-decker, control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global
population– that is 3.5 billion people. [...]
(2) Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
http://www.alternet.org/economy/shocking-new-report-superrich-have-grabbed-half-worlds-assets
Shocking New Report: Super-Rich Have Grabbed Half the World's Assets
Lynn Parramore
October 21, 2014
According to a new report, the richest one percent have got their mitts
on almost half the world's assets. Think that’s the end of the story?
Think again. This is only the beginning.
The “Global Annual Wealth Report [3],” freshly released by investment
giant Credit Suisse, analyzes the shocking trend of growing wealth
inequality around the world. What the researchers find is that global
wealth has increased every year since 2008, and that personal wealth
seems to be rising at the fastest rate ever recorded, much of it driven
by strong equity markets. But the benefits of this growth have largely
been channeled to those who are already affluent. While the restaurant
workers in America struggled to achieve wages of $10 an hour for their
labor, those invested in equities saw their wealth soar without lifting
a finger. So it goes around the world.
The bottom half of the world’s people now own less than 1 percent of
total wealth, and they’re struggling to hold onto even that minuscule
portion. On the other hand, the wealthiest 10 percent have accumulated a
staggering 87 percent of global assets. The top percentile has 48.2
percent of the world wealth. For now.
One of the scary things about the wealth of the supperich is what French
economist Thomas Piketty pointed out in his best-selling book, Capital
in the 21st Century. Once they’ve got a big chunk of wealth, their share
will get bigger even if they sit by and do absolutely nothing. Piketty
sums up this economic reality in a simple and horrifying formula: r > g.
Basically, this means that when rate of return on wealth is greater than
the overall rate of growth of the economy, as it has nearly always been
throughout history, the rich will grow inevitably richer and the poor
poorer unless there is some kind of intervention, like higher taxes on
wealth, for example. If r is less than g, the assets of the
super-wealthy will erode, but if r is greater than g, you eventually get
the explosion of gigantic inherited fortunes and dynasties.
This is happening now: If you look at the Forbes 400 [4] list of the
wealthiest people in America, you see a lot more inherited fortunes in
the upper ranks than you did a couple of decades ago, when the policies
that held inequality at bay began to get dismantled. In today’s top 10,
there are more scions of the Walton family than entrepreneurs like Bill
Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. These people have essentially done nothing of
value for society, and yet their undue influence shapes our political
landscape with the wave of a wad of cash.
There have been moments in history when things were not so lopsided.
During the post-war period, inequality was contained because governments
made sure their rich didn’t accumulate at such alarming rates by doing
things like taxing their estates at a high rate. At the same time, they
created policies to lift the incomes of the less well-off and allow them
to have some basic security. But that’s an exception in history. Most of
the time, this kind of intervention did not happen, and so the rich kept
gobbling more and accumulating more power to keep it that way until one
of two things happened — a revolution or some kind of catastrophe or
disruptive event, like a war, shook things up.
As the Credit Suisse report states:
“[Wealth inequality] has been the case throughout most of human history,
with wealth ownership often equating with land holdings, and wealth more
often acquired via inheritance or conquest rather than talent or hard
work. However, a combination of factors caused wealth inequality to
trend downwards in high income countries during much of the 20th
century, suggesting that a new era had emerged. That downward trend now
appears to have stalled, and possibly gone into reverse.”
That’s right. We’re on a turbo-charged ride back to the days of Downton
Abbey. Piketty warns that we’re in the early stages of reverting right
back to periods of massive inequality, like 19th-century Britain or
18th-century France, where great dynastic fortunes ruled and everybody
else fought for scraps.
What the statistics and formulas don’t show is the kind of human
suffering that results from this kind of extreme inequality. While the
global elite zip around the world in private jets and watch their stock
portfolios expand on computer screens from within their gated mansions,
the bottom half stays awake at night trying to think of how to pay for
medicine for a sick child. The things that give life dignity and
meaning, like a quality education, a decent job, and the security of
knowing you have a roof over your head and a doctor to care for you when
you are ill grow further and further out of reach. Anxiety never leaves
because one unforeseen mishap can push you down into poverty, and if
you’re already there, you spend much of your time searching, often
fruitlessly, for a way out.
But there’s a little bit of anxiety percolating at the top, too. On the
June cover [5] of the conservative magazine American Spectator, a
cartoon shows an incensed mob looking on as a monocled fatcat is led to
a bloody guillotine — a scene evoking the Reign of Terror during the
French Revolution. The caption reads, “The New Class Warfare: Thomas
Piketty’s intellectual cover for confiscation.” In the story that
accompanies the image, James Pierson warns of revolution and a growing
class of suffering people who want to punish the rich and take away
their toys.
That would be one way to address things. Another would be the
recognition that inequality is extremely destabilizing and dangerous,
and that non-violent interventions are possible, as we saw in America
with the New Deal. Things like robust tax reform, unions, regulation,
changes in corporate governance and CEO pay, affordable education, jobs
programs, expansion of Social Security and universal healthcare.
Or we could just do things the old-fashioned way and wait for a disaster
even bigger than the meltdown of 2007-'08. In that case, fasten your
seatbelts. This ride could get very rough.
(3) Big 4 Accounting firms play a key role in Tax Havens
http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/big-4-audit-firms-play-big-role-offshore-murk
Big 4 Audit Firms Play Big Role in Offshore Murk
By Michael Hudson, Sasha Chavkin and Bart Mos
November 5, 2014, 4:00 pm
KEY FINDINGS
- Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach, Deutsche Bank, Abbott Laboratories and
nearly 340 other companies have secured secret deals from Luxembourg
that allowed many of them to slash their global tax bills.
- PricewaterhouseCoopers has helped multinational companies obtain at
least 548 tax rulings in Luxembourg from 2002 to 2010. These legal
secret deals feature complex financial structures designed to create
drastic tax reductions. The rulings provide written assurance that
companies’ tax-saving plans will be viewed favorably by Luxembourg
authorities.
- Companies have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through
Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes. Some firms have
enjoyed effective tax rates of less than 1 percent on the profits
they’ve shuffled into Luxembourg.
- Many of the tax deals exploited international tax mismatches that
allowed companies to avoid taxes both in Luxembourg and elsewhere
through the use of so-called hybrid loans.
- In many cases Luxembourg subsidiaries handling hundreds of millions
of dollars in business maintain little presence and conduct little
economic activity in Luxembourg. One popular address – 5, rue Guillaume
Kroll – is home to more than 1,600 companies.
(4) Multinationals route profits through Luxembourg to reduce their taxes
http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks/big-4-audit-firms-play-big-role-offshore-murk
Luxembourg Leaks: Global Companies' Secrets Exposed
Capping a six-month investigation, the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its media partners are publishing a
secret cache of leaked tax documents that show how multinational
corporations throughout the globe routed profits through tiny and
wealthy Luxembourg to reduce their taxes.
Pepsi, IKEA, FedEx and 340 other international companies have secured
secret deals from the landlocked European duchy, that has been called a
“magical fairyland” for brand-name corporations seeking to drastically
reduce tax bills.
(5) US Election: Low turnout as Voters wake up to Rigged System
From: Paul de Burgh-Day <pdeburgh@lorinna.net>
Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2014 21:40:19 +1100
Subject: Mike Whitney - US Elections: Obama Leads Democrats to Midterm
Massacre
US Elections: Obama Leads Democrats to Midterm Massacre
The Republican Victory: Grab a Pitchfork, President Flim-Flam Leads
Democrats to Mid-term Massacre
By Mike Whitney
Global Research, November 07, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-republican-victory-grab-a-pitchfork-president-flim-flam-leads-democrats-to-midterm-massacre/5412554
“The Republican victory does not represent a shift by the American
population to the right, but demonstrates the bankrupt and reactionary
character of the Democratic Party and the mass disillusionment with the
Obama administration. In the absence of any progressive alternative to
the two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, the majority of
potential voters stayed home. Voter turnout hit another record low, with
only 38 percent going to the polls….Voter participation by young people
fell particularly sharply. Barely one-third of eligible voters went to
the polls in California, the most populous state.” Patrick Martin,
Republicans win control of Senate in US congressional elections, World
Socialist Web Site
“You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches, and then pull it
out six inches, and say you’re making progress.” Malcolm X
The White House has denied claims that the midterm elections were a
referendum on Barack Obama, but the polling data shows that they were.
According to a CBS News exit poll:
“Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said their opinion of the
president influenced their vote… 34 percent said they wanted to make a
statement in opposition to Mr. Obama, while 20 percent said they voted
in support of him.”
Those differences were more stark among Republican voters “61 percent
(of whom) said they cast ballots to take a stand against the current
administration. (Only) Thirty-five percent of those who voted for GOP
candidates said Mr. Obama didn’t play a role in their decisions at the
polling places.” (2014 midterm elections look like a referendum on
Obama, CBS News)
There’s no doubt that antipathy towards Obama played a significant role
in Tuesday night’s bloodbath. Even so, White House Press Secretary Josh
Earnest insists that, “Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on
the name that’s on the ballot, not the name that’s not….It’s up to those
individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions
for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used
to their benefit in the elections.”
In other words, the Democratic candidates that went down in flames on
Tuesday, can only blame themselves. While that might be a good way to
deflect responsibility, it certainly doesn’t square with the facts. Just
get a load of these exit poll results from Forbes:
“45% of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the
country. It was the top issue of four listed on the exit poll ballot.
Voters were generally pessimistic about it. Only 1% checked the box that
said the economy’s condition was “excellent.” 70% said it was not so
good or poor. 78% were worried about its direction in the next year. In
another question, voters split pretty evenly: around a third of voters
said it was getting better, getting worse, and staying about the same.
More voters expected the life for the next generation of Americans to be
worse rather than better, 48 to 22%.” (Election Results From A To Z: An
Exit Poll Report, Forbes)
What a damning survey. What a damning indictment of Obama. The vast
majority of the people think the economy still stinks and that living
standards for their kids are going to get a whole lot worse. And you
wonder why the Dems got their heads handed to them on Tuesday? It’s
because they failed on the number one issue, that’s why.
But the implosion of the Democratic party pales in comparison to the
bigger issue, that is, that more and more people are dropping off the
radar and out of the system. THAT is significant. Take a look at this
from NPR’s All Things Considered on Wednesday:
Robert Siegel: “…as of today, according to numbers from the Associated
Press, a bit over 83 million people voted. As a share of the
voting-eligible population, that is 36.6 percent … if the national
turnout rate doesn’t reach 38.1 percent, it would be the lowest turnout
since the midterm elections of 1942. And as Michael McDonald points out,
that was in the middle of the Second World War.” (Midterm Elections May
Have Had Record Low Turnout NPR All Things Considered)
Now you might think that the bigshots in Washington don’t care if you
vote or not, but you’re wrong. They do care. You see, they put together
this shiny-new system called “democracy” that conceals their looting
operations behind a masque of “public approval”. That approval comes in
the form of balloting which they see as a necessary component for
keeping the serf-sheeple in line and for shifting ever-larger amounts of
the nation’s wealth to their criminal friends on Wall Street. Only now,
it looks like the curtain has slipped a bit, and more people are opting
out of this Potemkin-charade of “representative government”. Check this
out from the World Socialist Web Site:
“Voter turnout was at record lows, with two-thirds of those eligible to
vote staying away from the polls. This mass abstention was particularly
pronounced among the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working
class—those most disillusioned by the empty promises of Obama’s 2008 and
2012 presidential campaigns.
In Michigan, for example, voter turnout in Detroit was only 31 percent,
well below the 40 percent level predicted by city officials. This
shortfall accounts for the entire margin of defeat for the Democratic
candidate for governor, Mark Schauer, running against Republican
incumbent Rick Snyder…
Perhaps the most revealing finding in the exit polls was that two-thirds
of those who cast ballots Tuesday viewed the US economic system as
deeply unfair and rigged in favor of the wealthy. There was evidence in
the exit polls that millions are losing faith in the capitalist system
altogether, and not merely expressing discontent with the conditions of
economic slump that have prevailed since the financial crash of 2008.”
(Republicans, Obama prepare post-election escalation of war, social
attacks, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site
People are throwing in the towel, they’ve had it up to here with this
crummy system that only delivers for the 1 percent. Everyone knows that
the country is ruled by an oligarchy of racketeers who don’t give a rip
about anything except pumping up the bottom line and stiff-arming
working people. Why participate in a system like that?
And don’t give me that hogwash about the “differences between the two
parties”.
What a laugh. Did you notice how Obama snuggled up to Mitch McConnell
just hours after the Dems took their biggest shellacking in history?
It’s all a show. These guys are all in bed together. They don’t care
about you and me. It’s a joke.
Just look at the cynical game the Dems are playing to convince their
constituency that they actually have “heartfelt convictions” and that
they’re true liberals. They’re always blabbering about same sex marriage
and “a woman’s right to choose”. Why do you figure that is?
It’s because their corporate Sugar daddies tell them to steer-clear of
any issue that might cost them some of their precious money, like higher
wages, better benefits, job security, health care, pensions, unions etc;
all the things the Dems say they care about, but never lift a finger to
support.
Remember how President Dipstick flew over Wisconsin blowing kisses to
the people below while Scott Walker was busy dismantling collective
bargaining rights for public workers?
That’s the Dems attitude towards working people in a nutshell. That’s
why they’re all about gay rights and abortion. It’s because they threw
working people under the bus 30 fu**ing years ago. Abortion is the last
thing they can hang their hat on. It’s pathetic. Here’s how Joseph
Kishore sums it up over at the WSWS:
“The Democratic strategy of appealing to affluent layers of the middle
class on the basis of identity politics while working with the
Republicans to step up attacks on workers’ jobs, wages and living
standards produced an electoral disaster. In a contradictory way,
reflecting a system monopolized by two right-wing parties of big
business, the election showed that appeals on the basis of race, gender
and sexuality move only a small fraction of the population, while the
broad masses of people are driven by more fundamental class
issues—issues on which the Democrats have nothing to offer…
Underlying these processes is a profound crisis—not only of the
Democratic Party, but of the entire political system. Both parties
represent the interests of a tiny layer of the corporate and financial
elite in alliance with the military-intelligence apparatus. Beyond the
confines of the top 5 or 10 percent of the population, the state
confronts a working class that is angry, dissatisfied and increasingly
hostile.”
(The Democratic Party implosion, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site)
The system is in crisis, and the reason should be obvious to anyone
willing to pull his head out of the sand long enough to see what’s
really going on. It’s because capitalism doesn’t deliver the goods. It’s
that simple. Everything is stacked in favor of the moneybags
bloodsuckers on top. They don’t even try to hide it anymore. Have you
noticed how Maserati sales are threw the roof?
It’s true. America’s a great place if you got dough. And if you don’t,
well, then you might want to get yourself a nice, comfy cardboard box
and a dry-spot by the river.
Is it any wonder why people under 30 have checked out entirely? They’re
not buying this “capitalism is wonderful” horsecrap. They feel the sting
of this system every damn day. Do you really think that a college grad
with an MBA in engineering who’s living in his parent’s crawlspace,
who’s wracked up a heaping $65,000 in student loans, and who has over
200 job rejections stacked a mile-high on his desk, gets up every
morning thinking, “God I’m glad I live in America. Isn’t it swell to
live in a country where everyone has a chance to get ahead?”
Right. These people have already quit the system and they’re not coming
back. Among young voters (aged 18-29) only 13 percent cast ballots on
Tuesday. There’s your ringing endorsement of capitalism in one dazzling
data-point: 13 freaking percent. That’s a system that has out-lived its
shelf-life if you ask me.
One last thing: We should give a hat tip to some of the people who
figured out what Obama was all about from the get go, like the editors
of Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Counterpunch
has been skewering President Flim Flam for more 8 years now, even when
the liberal “thought police” blasted anyone who as much as uttered a
cross word about him. (I wonder how many of those die-hard Ombamabots
have the stones to admit now that they were wrong? Not many, I’ll bet.)
Anyway, take a look at this Cockburn article I dug up from the CP
archives. It pretty well sums up the editorial position of the magazine…
And it was written back in November, 2003:
“In these last days I’ve been scraping around, trying to muster a single
positive reason to encourage a vote for… Obama-Biden, as opposed to the
McCain-Palin ticket?…
In substantive terms Obama’s run has been the negation of almost every
decent progressive principle, a negation achieved with scarcely a bleat
of protest from the progressives seeking to hold him to account. The
Michael Moores stay silent. Abroad, Obama stands for imperial
renaissance. He has groveled before the Israel lobby and pandered to the
sourest reflexes of the cold war era. At home he has crooked the knee to
bankers and Wall Street, to the oil companies, the coal companies, the
nuclear lobby, the big agricultural combines. He is even more popular
with Pentagon contractors than McCain, and has been the most popular of
the candidates with K Street lobbyists. He has been fearless in
offending progressives, constant in appeasing the powerful.”…
“Obama invokes change. Yet never has the dead hand of the past had a
“reform” candidate so firmly by the windpipe.” (Change You Can See,
Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch)
Cockburn knew that Obama was a fake and that the Democratic leadership
had no intention of changing anything. The plan was to crank the Bush
agenda up to full-throttle; expand the wars, increase the surveillance,
eviscerate civil liberties, and shift more of the nation’s wealth to
their feral-tycoon bosses on Wall Street. That was the plan and that’s
what they did.
Tuesday’s electoral meltdown was just blowback from the many rank and
file Dems who were either too mad to vote the party ticket or too
distraught to even drag themselves to the polling booths. And therein
lies the silver lining to this mess, which is that people are
disillusioned, frightened and angry. They hate Wall Street, the media,
the do-nothing Congress, and the sell-out-loser Democrats. They want
change and they’re willing to move further to the right or left to get it.
That should be fertile ground for even the most fainthearted
revolutionary. There’s no reason why the public’s frustration and can’t
be channeled into more productive activity, like a general strike, a
mass exodus from the two-party duopoly, or a thundering march on the
Capital.
Why waste all that rage on whining and handwringing? The system is
broken. Deal with it.
Organize. Grab a pitchfork. Do something!
(6) The two parties are instruments of the same Financial Oligarchy
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/11/06/elec-n06.html
Republicans, Obama prepare post-election escalation of war, social attacks
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2014
In the wake of Tuesday’s electoral drubbing of the Democratic Party, the
victorious Republicans and the Obama White House have begun an elaborate
and highly orchestrated political charade. Amid talk of compromise and
finding “common ground,” what is being organized in Washington is a
gang-up of two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties against the
working class.
Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Obama made
media appearances only an hour apart Wednesday. Each pledged to
collaborate with the other.
The American people “have chosen divided government” for the next two
years, McConnell said. “We all have the same goal” of creating jobs and
improving the living standards of the American people, Obama
reciprocated, pledging to “get stuff done” with the Republicans, who
will control both houses of Congress.
McConnell warned Obama not to issue an executive order exempting
millions of undocumented workers from deportation, calling it “waving a
red flag in front of a bull.” At his press conference, Obama reiterated
a previous pledge—already postponed multiple times—to take executive
action along those lines. But behind the scenes, talks will begin on an
immigration measure along the lines demanded by corporate America to
guarantee a secure supply of low-wage, brutally exploited labor.
At his press conference in Louisville, Kentucky, McConnell reassured
Wall Street that there would be no repetition of the 2013 government
shutdown that roiled the financial markets. “There will be no government
shutdowns and no default on the national debt,” he said.
Obama held out the prospect of an agreement on a huge tax break for
corporations that have $2 trillion in profits stashed in overseas
accounts to avoid income taxes, in effect rewarding them for tax
evasion. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have already expressed
support for such a deal.
The president revealed that his first post-election meeting with the
congressional leadership from both parties, set for Friday at the White
House, will include an extensive briefing by General Lloyd Austin,
commander of US military forces in the Middle East, on the status of the
war in Syria and Iraq against the Sunni fundamentalist group Islamic State.
He said he would seek congressional passage of an Authorization for the
Use of Military Force similar to the resolutions pushed through by the
Bush administration before the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq,
indicating that he expected support for the measure from the incoming
Republican majorities in both houses.
The maneuvers between the two big-business parties were unfolding as
overnight ballot-counting confirmed the dimensions of the Republican
sweep—and demonstrated the mass abstention from voting on the part of
the great majority of working people.
The Republicans took control of the US Senate, taking as of now 52 seats
out of 100, a gain of at least seven seats, with two more seats, in
Alaska and Louisiana, likely to fall into their hands. Of the 36 Senate
seats at stake Tuesday, the two parties had targeted ten held by
Democrats and three by Republicans as potentially vulnerable. Of these
13, Republicans won ten, Democrats only one, and Republicans lead in the
two still undecided states.
Republican Dan Sullivan led Democratic Senator Mark Begich in Alaska,
although there were still many remote areas not yet reporting. Begich
would be the fourth Democratic senator defeated for reelection. Mary
Landrieu of Louisiana would be the fifth. She is expected to lose a
runoff December 6 after winning 42 percent of the vote in an
eight-candidate primary Tuesday, while the two top Republicans took 52
percent between them.
In the House of Representatives, the Republicans added between 13 and 19
seats to their majority, depending on the outcome of a half dozen
too-close-to-call races in New York, Arizona and California. The
Democratic debacle had two components: a huge decline in turnout in
heavily Democratic states like New York, Illinois and California; and a
continuing decline in southern states and Appalachia.
The only remaining Democratic-held seats in the six states of the Deep
South (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and
Arkansas) are in black-majority districts. Not a single Democrat holds a
congressional seat in the Appalachian coal-mining region (southwest
Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, West Virginia, southwest Virginia,
eastern Kentucky and Tennessee).
The rump Democratic Party caucus in the House, the smallest in 86 years,
is concentrated in the Northeast and the Pacific Coast, with a few urban
areas and industrial centers in the Midwest. If one starts in Richmond,
Virginia and proceeds west, one can travel 3,000 miles to Oakland,
California before encountering a congressional district held by a Democrat.
The Cook Political Report summed up the congressional vote in these
terms: “Plain and simple, the story in House races was an epic turnout
collapse and motivational deficit.”
The Democratic performance was so abysmal that in New York City,
Republican Congressman Michael Grimm won reelection despite being under
indictment on 20 felony counts relating to a restaurant business he owns
(and despite his well-publicized threat of violence against a journalist).
In races for state governors, Republicans won a top-heavy majority of
the 36 seats on the ballot Tuesday, including the largest and most
politically important: Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. While
a Democrat defeated the incumbent Republican governor of Pennsylvania,
Republican candidates won heavily Democratic states such as
Massachusetts and Maryland. After Tuesday, 31 of the 50 states have
Republican governors, and Republicans hold 65 state legislative chambers
compared to 23 for Democrats, with the remainder tied or undecided.
Despite the sweeping character of its electoral triumph, however, the
Republican Party has no mandate from voters for its right-wing program
of tax cuts for business, destruction of social programs, and escalating
militarism.
Voter turnout was at record lows, with two-thirds of those eligible to
vote staying away from the polls. This mass abstention was particularly
pronounced among the poorest and most oppressed sections of the working
class—those most disillusioned by the empty promises of Obama’s 2008 and
2012 presidential campaigns.
In Michigan, for example, voter turnout in Detroit was only 31 percent,
well below the 40 percent level predicted by city officials. This
shortfall accounts for the entire margin of defeat for the Democratic
candidate for governor, Mark Schauer, running against Republican
incumbent Rick Snyder.
Similarly, in Wisconsin, voter turnout was at record levels for a
midterm election throughout the state, due to the sharp polarization
caused by Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attacks on public
employees. The exception was Milwaukee, the state’s largest city.
In Georgia, turnout among African-American voters was lower than in
2010, the last midterm election, demonstrating that right-wing
Democratic candidate Michelle Nunn had sparked little support in her bid
for an open Senate seat.
Exit polls showed the while many voters wished to express hostility to
the Obama administration, congressional Republicans were even more
unpopular: Some 30 percent of voters were satisfied with Obama, while
only 25 percent were satisfied with the Republicans. Within the
framework of the two-party system, however, the only alternative to
Obama was the Republicans.
Perhaps the most revealing finding in the exit polls was that two-thirds
of those who cast ballots Tuesday viewed the US economic system as
deeply unfair and rigged in favor of the wealthy. There was evidence in
the exit polls that millions are losing faith in the capitalist system
altogether, and not merely expressing discontent with the conditions of
economic slump that have prevailed since the financial crash of 2008.
While the proportion of those who viewed the economy as “not so good” or
“poor” fell from nine out of ten in 2010 to seven out of ten in 2014,
more than half now believe that the next generation will live worse than
their parents.
A waitress in Alaska interviewed in an exit poll was quoted in the New
York Times as saying: “I feel like I’m in that class of people that’s
kind of getting left behind in this whirlwind… I’m in that economic
class of people that works really, really hard and will probably never
get too far ahead, barely makes it, and kind of gets punished for it.”
Needless to say, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, controlled
by corporate interests and bound hand-and-foot to the capitalist system,
can address such class-based discontent.
The 2014 election marks the fourth time in the last five elections that
the party in power, Democratic or Republican, was thrown out of office
by voters. In 2006, the Democrats took control of the House and Senate,
in 2008 they captured the White House. In 2010, Republicans recaptured
the House and now, in 2014, they have recaptured the Senate.
These shifts from one party to the other have resolved none of the
issues facing working people, nor can they, because the two parties are
instruments of the same financial oligarchy.
(7) G20 leaders in the mood to act on tax avoidance after Luxembourg leaks
http://www.smh.com.au/national/g20-leaders-in-the-mood-to-act-on-tax-avoidance-after-luxembourg-leaks-20141107-11icy3.html
Date: November 08 2014
Tom Allard
Ahead of next weekend's G20 summit, the release of leaked documents
showing Luxembourg's facilitation of industrial scale tax avoidance by
multinational corporations could not have been better timed.
A cache of documents obtained by the International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists, and released on Thursday, found hundreds of
companies - including Australian firms such as AMP, Macquarie Group and
Lend Lease - had funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars into
Luxembourg, slashing their tax bills in the process.
In some cases, the firms were paying effective tax rates of as little as
1 per cent.
While immense, the "Lux leaks" documents are only a portion of the tax
avoidance taking place in Luxembourg, representing only those deals
arranged by global accounting firm PwC.
And while Luxembourg is arguably the world's biggest tax haven, it
represents only a sliver of the global tax avoidance game.
By their very nature, calculating the scale of secret tax arrangements
is near impossible, but some guesstimates posit that wealth equivalent
to almost 10 per cent of global GDP - or about $US8 trillion - is
squirrelled away in tax havens.
Others say the figure is closer to $US20 trillion.
Whatever the exact extent of tax avoidance, the challenge of combating
rampant tax minimisation in the globalised, digitised economy of the
21st century is immense.
But as governments struggle to balance their budgets and deal with an
increasing number of citizens enraged by the inequity of the global tax
regime, leaders are ready to act.
Curbing tax avoidance is one of the key agenda items when world leaders
from the group of 20 large economies gather in Brisbane.
Piggybacking on work begun by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development in 2009, the G20 economies have agreed on common
reporting standards for the automatic exchange of "tax information"
between member countries.
There are also proposals to agree to disclose the true beneficial
ownership of bank accounts and trusts, although China is reportedly
resisting the move.
Either way, says Mike Callaghan, a former senior Treasury official now
with the Lowy Institute, the measures - while worthy - largely impact on
bank secrecy and money laundering.
"That's dealing mostly with individuals, not companies," Callaghan says.
The biggest problem with tax avoidance lies with multinational
corporates shifting profits, debt and income through a variety of
techniques, many of them done under a veil of secrecy or via hugely
complex but legal arrangements devised by highly paid tax lawyers.
Some 60 per cent of international transactions occur within
multinational corporations.
The problem has been magnified by the emergence of digital companies and
e-commerce, with firms such as Amazon, Microsoft. Google and Apple able
to easily book profits in low taxing jurisdictions.
The OECD "Base Erosion and Profit Shifting" project is examining how to
address the problem, amply illustrated by what's going on in Luxembourg.
Callaghan argues that real advances will be made if G20 nations pledge
to adopt an OECD recommendation and force multinationals to report on
their sales, income, debts, profits and other financial information on
a country-by-country basis, thus illuminating discrepancies between
where profits are generated and taxed.
This would ensure that the G20 finance ministers commitment that
"profits should be taxed in the place where the value is created and the
economic activities occur" is more than just rhetoric.
There is in-principle support for this OECD initiative, but a path to
concrete action would be a ground-breaking move if endorsed in the G20
leaders' summit Brisbane on November 15-16.
Many tax justice advocates argue the country-by-country financials of
multinationals should not just be shared by governments, but made
publicly available to enhance transparency.
Consumer agitation and boycotts are seen by activists as essential
weapons in forcing multinationals to change their behaviour.
In its report to the G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns in
September, the OECD declared that progress on enhancing transparency to
combat tax avoidance has been "massive".
According to Mark Zirnsak from the Australian arm of the Tax Justice
Network, momentum for global reform is gathering pace, with Australian
Treasurer Joe Hockey providing good leadership on combating the
"thievery" of tax cheats.
But Graeme Cooper, professor of taxation law at the University of Sydney
is more sceptical. He says self-interest of countries often trumps
global co-operation.
He argues that the US, for example, is not so concerned about tax
avoidance by digital giants such as Google as it helps these American
companies prosper and underpins a vibrant information technology sector
that is a growth engine of the US economy.
For tax havens, the rewards can be lucrative too.
Luxembourg, the tiny duchy nestled between France, Germany and Belgium,
is a case in point.
It has a population of less than 550,000 but has $US3.7 trillion ($4.2
trillion) in assets under management, second behind the US. It's clearly
done well out of the arrangements. Its GDP per capita is more than
$US110,000, almost twice that of the US, and the highest in the world.
701 USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
Newsletter published on 8 November 2014
(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs
(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist
(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski
(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs
From: Peter Grafström <mj532445@tele2.se> Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2014
12:32:50 +0100
John Loftus claims that the USS Liberty was sending the sensitive info
to the Arabs, warning them and that this was the reason they destroyed
the ships capability to transmit, but didnt sink it.
It is mentioned in The secret war against the jews. p
182,191,194,259,262-67,269-77,277-286
The following info is from p259. It is true to the text but not the
exact wording.
US informed the arabs that Israel would not have finished a nuclear
defense shield yet thus indicating a window of opportunity in 1967.
Israel informed the Us about intentions of launching a preemptive
strike, realizing the danger of a massive arab attack. Us intel promptly
informed the arabs about that. The Us,in order to curry favor with the
oil producers provided the arabs with precise details about Israels
order of battle during the war
Israeli intel discovered the betrayal and attacked Uss Liberty, which
was gathering electronic info on Israeli troop movements and sending it
to british intel which in turn relayed it to the arabs.
John Loftus based this book on many interviews with anonymous intel
sources. Of course this makes it vulnerable to be manipulated by lies.
But the explanation seems to me much more probable than the one about
informing the Usg.
(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
from The Secret War Against the Jews, 1994
http://mailstar.net/Aarons-USS-Liberty.doc
Comment (Peter Myers, Novermber 8, 2014):
The authors claim that Israeli leaders (hawks all) took the USS Liberty
out because they feared that it was feeding intelligence to the Arabs.
This was AFTER Israel had destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian airforces;
the only airforce left in the skies was the Israeli.
As if Egypt or Syria could make some sort of comeback wityhout an airforce.
The US sought a peace-keeping role to stop Soviet entry into the war. To
that end, it tried to rein in the Israeli military and be somewhat
even-handed. But Israeli leaders saw this as aid to the Arabs.
The authors concede that Israel sent fake news messages to Jordan
(ostensibly from Egypt) to lure it to enter the war, so that Israel
could obtain the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The USS Liberty had
recorded that Israeli duplicity.
Although author Mark Aarons sided with Israel against its Soviet allies,
he was also a Communist, and son of the Secretary of the Communist Party
of Australia.
One conclusion from reading the Israeli side of the story, is that
Chomsky's depiction of Israel as merely a Sheriff for the US is totally
discredited. Israel behaved as an independent Great Power, and showed no
loyalty to any other power.
(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Aarons
Mark Aarons (born 25 December 1951) is an Australian journalist and
author. He was a political adviser to NSW Premier Bob Carr. [...] He is
the son of the late Laurie Aarons, former secretary of the Communist
Party of Australia. Mark Aarons was a member of the Communist Party of
Australia from 1969 to 1978, and a Young Communist organiser in
1977.[...] This page was last modified on 14 October 2014 at 02:57.
(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2014 03:14:47 +0900
Subject: The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS | Consortiumnews
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/05/the-silence-of-the-israelis-on-isis/
The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS
Consortiumnews
November 5, 2014
A curious silence in the U.S.-led battle against the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria is coming from Israel, which has advocated the overthrow
of Iran’s ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, but has had little
to say about the brutal Islamists seeking to oust Assad, notes Stephen
J. Sniegoski.
By Stephen J. Sniegoski
In the war on the Islamic State, the alleged scourge of humanity, little
is heard about the position of America’s much-ballyhooed greatest ally
in the Middle East, if not the world, Israel. Now the Islamic State has
been conquering territory in very close proximity to the border of
Israel. But Israel does not seem to be fearful and it is not taking any
action.
And the Obama administration and American media pundits do not seem to
be the least bit disturbed. This is quite in contrast to the complaints
about other Middle East countries such as Turkey that are being harshly
criticized for their failure to become actively involved in fighting the
Islamic State.
President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Oct 1, 2014. The
meeting was described as chilly, reflecting the strained relationship
between the two leaders. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
For example, a New York Times editorial, “Mr. Erdogan’s Dangerous Game,”
begins, “Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once aspired to lead
the Muslim world. At this time of regional crisis, he has been anything
but a leader. Turkish troops and tanks have been standing passively
behind a chicken-wire border fence while a mile away in Syria, Islamic
extremists are besieging the town of Kobani and its Kurdish population.”
An article in the Boston Globe read “Turkey has failed Kobani, Kurds.”
An editorial in the USA Today was titled “Turkey waits as ISIL crushes
Kobani.”
Neocon Charles Krauthammer in “Erdogan’s Double Game” compared Turkey’s
failure to come to the defense of the Kurds in the surrounded border
town of Kobani to Stalin’s unwillingness to aid the uprising of Polish
nationalist forces in Warsaw in 1944, thus allowing the latter’s
destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
“For almost a month, Kobani Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic
State fighters,” Krauthammer wrote. “Outgunned, outmanned, and
surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to
allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused
even that, let alone intervening directly.”
Even the normally antiwar Noam Chomsky expressed support for protecting
the Kurds. “With regard to Kobani, it is a shocking situation,” Chomsky
opined. “This morning’s newspaper described Turkish military operation
against Kurds in Turkey, not against ISIS, a couple of kilometers across
the border where they are in danger of being slaughtered. I think
something should be done at the UN in terms of a strong resolution to
call for a ceasefire.”
“It is hard to impose the use of force,” Chomsky continued, “but to the
extent that it can be done try and protect Kobani from destruction at
the hands of ISIS, which could be a major massacre with enormous
consequences.” Chomsky added that “the strategic significance of the
town in the Kurdish region is pretty obvious, and the Turkish role is
critical in this.”
Israel’s Reticence
Returning to the issue of Israel, the fact of the matter is that Israel
acts to protect its own national interests. At the current time, the
primary goal of the Islamic State is to purify Islam rather than attack
non-Muslims.
In response to Internet queries as to why the militant group wasn’t
fighting Israel instead of killing Muslims in Iraq and Syria, its
representatives responded: “We haven’t given orders to kill the Israelis
and the Jews. The war against the nearer enemy, those who rebel against
the faith, is more important. Allah commands us in the Koran to fight
the hypocrites, because they are much more dangerous than those who are
fundamentally heretics.”
As justification for this stance, the group cited the position of the
first caliph, Abu Bakr, who began his caliphate by fighting against
those he deemed apostates who still professed to be followers of Islam.
(Shiites hold a negative view of Abu Bakr and his policies). Also cited
was Saladin, who fought the Shiites in Egypt before conquering
Christian-controlled Jerusalem.
Considering the Islamic State is targeting Muslims, the Israeli
government does not see it as a significant enemy at this time. And it
is reasonable for Israeli leaders to believe that the Islamic State
would never move on to attack their country because it will never be
able to conquer its major Islamic foes, though American military
involvement would further secure Israel from any possible threat from
the Islamic State.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is that the Islamic State actually
benefits Israel by causing problems for those very states that do
actively oppose Israel and support the Palestinians, such as Syria. What
the Islamic State is causing in the Middle East is perfectly attuned
with the view of the Israeli Right — as best articulated by Oded Yinon
in 1982 — which sought to have Israel’s Middle East enemies fragmented
and fighting among themselves in order to weaken the external threat to
Israel.
Currently, these divisions are not only plaguing Syria and Iraq, but
also Turkey, where ethnic Kurds are rioting because of the government’s
unwillingness to help their brethren in Syria, and Lebanon, where the
Shiite group Hezbollah — allied with Iran, Israel’s foremost enemy — is
being assailed by the radical jihadist Nusra Front, which has the
support of many Lebanese Sunnis. [See Jonathan Spyer, “The Shia-Sunni
War Reaches Lebanon,” Jerusalem Post, Middle East Forum, Oct. 17, 2014.]
More than this, the Netanyahu government is trying to take advantage of
the Islamic State’s aggression by falsely claiming that Hamas is its
equivalent. In an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29,
Netanyahu asserted that “Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel.
But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas
shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists.”
Thus, Netanyahu claimed that it is wrong for countries to criticize
Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians in its conflict with
Hamas, pointing out that “the same countries that now support
confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently
don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous
tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to
impose well beyond the territory under their control.”
In short, Netanyahu maintained that the Islamic State and Hamas were
essentially identical, “when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is
ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.”
National Interest
Now there is nothing strange about Israel’s position here. It is simply
acting in its own national interest. There is no reason to fight a group
that doesn’t threaten it. Furthermore, it is in Israel’s interest to try
to make it appear that it is acting for the good of all humanity when
attacking Hamas, and though these arguments are unlikely to sway any UN
members, the prime minister did provide ammunition to the Israel lobby
and its supporters that could be used to persuade some gullible Americans.
It can be argued that if Israel openly entered the fray as a member of
the anti-Islamic State coalition, it would be counterproductive. Since
many Arabs see Israel as their major enemy, Israel’s involvement in the
war would turn them against fighting the Islamic State and maybe even
cause some of them to support that militant jihadist group as an enemy
of Israel.
So it might be understandable that the United States would not demand
that Israel participate in the war against the Islamic State, just as it
did not expect Israel to fight against Saddam Hussein. Although this
might be understandable, if true it would mean that Israel could not
really be an ally of the United States in the Middle East because it
could not participate in America’s wars in the region, which is the very
raison d’état of an ally.
Conceivably, Israel could covertly support the enemies of Islamic State.
Israel has been doing just that in regard to Syria. During the past two
years it has launched airstrikes against Assad’s forces which has helped
the rebels. Israel takes the position that any attacks on its territory
from Syria are the responsibility of the Assad government even if they
are made by the rebels.
Moreover, just like the United States, Israel has provided training for
Syrian rebels. For example, Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir al-Noeimi, currently
the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free
Syrian Army, secretly trained in Israel in 2013 after being admitted
into the country for medical treatment. [See “Report: Commander of
Syrian Rebels Trained in Israel, Jewish Press News Briefs,” Feb. 24,
2014. In regard to Israeli participation in training Syrian rebels, see:
Jason Ditz, “Report Claims US, Israeli Trained Rebels Moving Toward
Damascus,” Antiwar.com, Aug. 25, 2013,; Jinan Mantash, “Israeli analyst
confirms link between Israel, ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels,” Alakbar
English, Oct. 17, 2014.]
Staying Out of the Fray
Israel’s pro-rebel activities in the Syrian conflict have not been
counterproductive in that they have not caused any of Assad’s many Arab
enemies to abandon their effort to remove his regime. But it is not
apparent that Israel is taking any steps like this regarding the Islamic
State, and the United States does not seem to be pressuring it to do so.
What this means is that Israel is not really any type of ally of the
United States. It does not bend its foreign policy to aid the United
States but only acts in its own interest. It takes actions against the
Assad regime because the latter is an ally of Iran and provides a
conduit for weapons being sent to Israeli’s enemy Hezbollah.
Israel’s inaction toward the Islamic State, despite its close proximity,
should actually provide a model for the United States to emulate. It
shows that the Islamic State should not be regarded as a threat to the
faraway United States. And this lesson is further confirmed by the fact
that the nearby Islamic countries, which should be far more endangered
than the United States, do not seem to be fighting hard against it. It
would seem that the fundamental way for the United States to face
significant attacks from the Islamic State is to attack it first, which
is exactly what it is now doing.
Considering Israel’s inactivity, it is ironic that in the United States
it is the supporters of Israel, such as the neoconservatives, who have
taken the lead in pushing for a hard-line American military position
against the Islamic State. [See Jim Lobe, “Project for a New American
Imbroglio,” LobeLog Foreign Policy, Aug. 28, 2014.]
Neocon Max Boot, for example, wrote about the need for “a
politico-military strategy to annihilate ISIS rather than simply chip
around the edges of its burgeoning empire,” which would “require a
commitment of some 10,000 U.S. advisors and Special Operators, along
with enhanced air power, to work with moderate elements in both Iraq and
Syria.”
Fred and Kimberly Kagan have developed a strategic plan involving up to
25,000 American ground troops to combat the Islamic State, which I have
already discussed at length. Some of the other noted members of the
neocon war-on-the-Islamic-State chorus include Bill Kristol,John
Podhoretz, Dan Senor, David Brooks, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Danielle
Pletka (vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the
American Enterprise Institute), and, as noted earlier, Charles Krauthammer.
Needless to say, neither the neocons, nor any other mainstream
commentators for that matter, have uttered a word about Israel’s
inaction. As Scott McConnell wrote in August in The American
Conservative, “over the past two generations thousands of articles have
been written proclaiming that Israel is a ‘vital strategic ally’ of the
United States, our best and only friend in the ‘volatile’ Middle East.
The claim is a commonplace among serving and aspiring Congressmen. I may
have missed it, but has anyone seen a hint that our vital regional ally
could be of any assistance at all in the supposedly civilizational
battle against ISIS?”
However, it would be far wiser for the United States to follow the
example of Israel here — and, in fact, always follow the example of
Israel by adhering to national interest (that of the United States, of
course, not Israel) — than to follow the advice of those American
supporters of Israel who have, because of their influence on American
Middle East policy, involved the United States in endless wars creating
a regional environment beneficial to Israel from the perspective of the
Israeli Right.
Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of The Transparent Cabal: The
Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National
Interest of Israel.
Newsletter published on 8 November 2014
(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs
(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist
(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski
(1) Zionists say USS Liberty was sending intelligence to the Arabs
From: Peter Grafström <mj532445@tele2.se> Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2014
12:32:50 +0100
John Loftus claims that the USS Liberty was sending the sensitive info
to the Arabs, warning them and that this was the reason they destroyed
the ships capability to transmit, but didnt sink it.
It is mentioned in The secret war against the jews. p
182,191,194,259,262-67,269-77,277-286
The following info is from p259. It is true to the text but not the
exact wording.
US informed the arabs that Israel would not have finished a nuclear
defense shield yet thus indicating a window of opportunity in 1967.
Israel informed the Us about intentions of launching a preemptive
strike, realizing the danger of a massive arab attack. Us intel promptly
informed the arabs about that. The Us,in order to curry favor with the
oil producers provided the arabs with precise details about Israels
order of battle during the war
Israeli intel discovered the betrayal and attacked Uss Liberty, which
was gathering electronic info on Israeli troop movements and sending it
to british intel which in turn relayed it to the arabs.
John Loftus based this book on many interviews with anonymous intel
sources. Of course this makes it vulnerable to be manipulated by lies.
But the explanation seems to me much more probable than the one about
informing the Usg.
(2) USS Liberty: the Israeli side of the story
from The Secret War Against the Jews, 1994
http://mailstar.net/Aarons-USS-Liberty.doc
Comment (Peter Myers, Novermber 8, 2014):
The authors claim that Israeli leaders (hawks all) took the USS Liberty
out because they feared that it was feeding intelligence to the Arabs.
This was AFTER Israel had destroyed the Egyptian and Syrian airforces;
the only airforce left in the skies was the Israeli.
As if Egypt or Syria could make some sort of comeback wityhout an airforce.
The US sought a peace-keeping role to stop Soviet entry into the war. To
that end, it tried to rein in the Israeli military and be somewhat
even-handed. But Israeli leaders saw this as aid to the Arabs.
The authors concede that Israel sent fake news messages to Jordan
(ostensibly from Egypt) to lure it to enter the war, so that Israel
could obtain the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The USS Liberty had
recorded that Israeli duplicity.
Although author Mark Aarons sided with Israel against its Soviet allies,
he was also a Communist, and son of the Secretary of the Communist Party
of Australia.
One conclusion from reading the Israeli side of the story, is that
Chomsky's depiction of Israel as merely a Sheriff for the US is totally
discredited. Israel behaved as an independent Great Power, and showed no
loyalty to any other power.
(3) Mark Aarons - Communist and Zionist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Aarons
Mark Aarons (born 25 December 1951) is an Australian journalist and
author. He was a political adviser to NSW Premier Bob Carr. [...] He is
the son of the late Laurie Aarons, former secretary of the Communist
Party of Australia. Mark Aarons was a member of the Communist Party of
Australia from 1969 to 1978, and a Young Communist organiser in
1977.[...] This page was last modified on 14 October 2014 at 02:57.
(4) The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS - Stephen J. Sniegoski
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2014 03:14:47 +0900
Subject: The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS | Consortiumnews
From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/05/the-silence-of-the-israelis-on-isis/
The Silence of the Israelis on ISIS
Consortiumnews
November 5, 2014
A curious silence in the U.S.-led battle against the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria is coming from Israel, which has advocated the overthrow
of Iran’s ally in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, but has had little
to say about the brutal Islamists seeking to oust Assad, notes Stephen
J. Sniegoski.
By Stephen J. Sniegoski
In the war on the Islamic State, the alleged scourge of humanity, little
is heard about the position of America’s much-ballyhooed greatest ally
in the Middle East, if not the world, Israel. Now the Islamic State has
been conquering territory in very close proximity to the border of
Israel. But Israel does not seem to be fearful and it is not taking any
action.
And the Obama administration and American media pundits do not seem to
be the least bit disturbed. This is quite in contrast to the complaints
about other Middle East countries such as Turkey that are being harshly
criticized for their failure to become actively involved in fighting the
Islamic State.
President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office, Oct 1, 2014. The
meeting was described as chilly, reflecting the strained relationship
between the two leaders. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
For example, a New York Times editorial, “Mr. Erdogan’s Dangerous Game,”
begins, “Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once aspired to lead
the Muslim world. At this time of regional crisis, he has been anything
but a leader. Turkish troops and tanks have been standing passively
behind a chicken-wire border fence while a mile away in Syria, Islamic
extremists are besieging the town of Kobani and its Kurdish population.”
An article in the Boston Globe read “Turkey has failed Kobani, Kurds.”
An editorial in the USA Today was titled “Turkey waits as ISIL crushes
Kobani.”
Neocon Charles Krauthammer in “Erdogan’s Double Game” compared Turkey’s
failure to come to the defense of the Kurds in the surrounded border
town of Kobani to Stalin’s unwillingness to aid the uprising of Polish
nationalist forces in Warsaw in 1944, thus allowing the latter’s
destruction at the hands of the Nazis.
“For almost a month, Kobani Kurds have been trying to hold off Islamic
State fighters,” Krauthammer wrote. “Outgunned, outmanned, and
surrounded on three sides, the defending Kurds have begged Turkey to
allow weapons and reinforcements through the border. Erdogan has refused
even that, let alone intervening directly.”
Even the normally antiwar Noam Chomsky expressed support for protecting
the Kurds. “With regard to Kobani, it is a shocking situation,” Chomsky
opined. “This morning’s newspaper described Turkish military operation
against Kurds in Turkey, not against ISIS, a couple of kilometers across
the border where they are in danger of being slaughtered. I think
something should be done at the UN in terms of a strong resolution to
call for a ceasefire.”
“It is hard to impose the use of force,” Chomsky continued, “but to the
extent that it can be done try and protect Kobani from destruction at
the hands of ISIS, which could be a major massacre with enormous
consequences.” Chomsky added that “the strategic significance of the
town in the Kurdish region is pretty obvious, and the Turkish role is
critical in this.”
Israel’s Reticence
Returning to the issue of Israel, the fact of the matter is that Israel
acts to protect its own national interests. At the current time, the
primary goal of the Islamic State is to purify Islam rather than attack
non-Muslims.
In response to Internet queries as to why the militant group wasn’t
fighting Israel instead of killing Muslims in Iraq and Syria, its
representatives responded: “We haven’t given orders to kill the Israelis
and the Jews. The war against the nearer enemy, those who rebel against
the faith, is more important. Allah commands us in the Koran to fight
the hypocrites, because they are much more dangerous than those who are
fundamentally heretics.”
As justification for this stance, the group cited the position of the
first caliph, Abu Bakr, who began his caliphate by fighting against
those he deemed apostates who still professed to be followers of Islam.
(Shiites hold a negative view of Abu Bakr and his policies). Also cited
was Saladin, who fought the Shiites in Egypt before conquering
Christian-controlled Jerusalem.
Considering the Islamic State is targeting Muslims, the Israeli
government does not see it as a significant enemy at this time. And it
is reasonable for Israeli leaders to believe that the Islamic State
would never move on to attack their country because it will never be
able to conquer its major Islamic foes, though American military
involvement would further secure Israel from any possible threat from
the Islamic State.
Moreover, the fact of the matter is that the Islamic State actually
benefits Israel by causing problems for those very states that do
actively oppose Israel and support the Palestinians, such as Syria. What
the Islamic State is causing in the Middle East is perfectly attuned
with the view of the Israeli Right — as best articulated by Oded Yinon
in 1982 — which sought to have Israel’s Middle East enemies fragmented
and fighting among themselves in order to weaken the external threat to
Israel.
Currently, these divisions are not only plaguing Syria and Iraq, but
also Turkey, where ethnic Kurds are rioting because of the government’s
unwillingness to help their brethren in Syria, and Lebanon, where the
Shiite group Hezbollah — allied with Iran, Israel’s foremost enemy — is
being assailed by the radical jihadist Nusra Front, which has the
support of many Lebanese Sunnis. [See Jonathan Spyer, “The Shia-Sunni
War Reaches Lebanon,” Jerusalem Post, Middle East Forum, Oct. 17, 2014.]
More than this, the Netanyahu government is trying to take advantage of
the Islamic State’s aggression by falsely claiming that Hamas is its
equivalent. In an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 29,
Netanyahu asserted that “Hamas’s immediate goal is to destroy Israel.
But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas
shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists.”
Thus, Netanyahu claimed that it is wrong for countries to criticize
Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians in its conflict with
Hamas, pointing out that “the same countries that now support
confronting ISIS, opposed Israel for confronting Hamas. They evidently
don’t understand that ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous
tree. ISIS and Hamas share a fanatical creed, which they both seek to
impose well beyond the territory under their control.”
In short, Netanyahu maintained that the Islamic State and Hamas were
essentially identical, “when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is
ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.”
National Interest
Now there is nothing strange about Israel’s position here. It is simply
acting in its own national interest. There is no reason to fight a group
that doesn’t threaten it. Furthermore, it is in Israel’s interest to try
to make it appear that it is acting for the good of all humanity when
attacking Hamas, and though these arguments are unlikely to sway any UN
members, the prime minister did provide ammunition to the Israel lobby
and its supporters that could be used to persuade some gullible Americans.
It can be argued that if Israel openly entered the fray as a member of
the anti-Islamic State coalition, it would be counterproductive. Since
many Arabs see Israel as their major enemy, Israel’s involvement in the
war would turn them against fighting the Islamic State and maybe even
cause some of them to support that militant jihadist group as an enemy
of Israel.
So it might be understandable that the United States would not demand
that Israel participate in the war against the Islamic State, just as it
did not expect Israel to fight against Saddam Hussein. Although this
might be understandable, if true it would mean that Israel could not
really be an ally of the United States in the Middle East because it
could not participate in America’s wars in the region, which is the very
raison d’état of an ally.
Conceivably, Israel could covertly support the enemies of Islamic State.
Israel has been doing just that in regard to Syria. During the past two
years it has launched airstrikes against Assad’s forces which has helped
the rebels. Israel takes the position that any attacks on its territory
from Syria are the responsibility of the Assad government even if they
are made by the rebels.
Moreover, just like the United States, Israel has provided training for
Syrian rebels. For example, Abdul-Ilah al-Bashir al-Noeimi, currently
the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) of the Free
Syrian Army, secretly trained in Israel in 2013 after being admitted
into the country for medical treatment. [See “Report: Commander of
Syrian Rebels Trained in Israel, Jewish Press News Briefs,” Feb. 24,
2014. In regard to Israeli participation in training Syrian rebels, see:
Jason Ditz, “Report Claims US, Israeli Trained Rebels Moving Toward
Damascus,” Antiwar.com, Aug. 25, 2013,; Jinan Mantash, “Israeli analyst
confirms link between Israel, ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels,” Alakbar
English, Oct. 17, 2014.]
Staying Out of the Fray
Israel’s pro-rebel activities in the Syrian conflict have not been
counterproductive in that they have not caused any of Assad’s many Arab
enemies to abandon their effort to remove his regime. But it is not
apparent that Israel is taking any steps like this regarding the Islamic
State, and the United States does not seem to be pressuring it to do so.
What this means is that Israel is not really any type of ally of the
United States. It does not bend its foreign policy to aid the United
States but only acts in its own interest. It takes actions against the
Assad regime because the latter is an ally of Iran and provides a
conduit for weapons being sent to Israeli’s enemy Hezbollah.
Israel’s inaction toward the Islamic State, despite its close proximity,
should actually provide a model for the United States to emulate. It
shows that the Islamic State should not be regarded as a threat to the
faraway United States. And this lesson is further confirmed by the fact
that the nearby Islamic countries, which should be far more endangered
than the United States, do not seem to be fighting hard against it. It
would seem that the fundamental way for the United States to face
significant attacks from the Islamic State is to attack it first, which
is exactly what it is now doing.
Considering Israel’s inactivity, it is ironic that in the United States
it is the supporters of Israel, such as the neoconservatives, who have
taken the lead in pushing for a hard-line American military position
against the Islamic State. [See Jim Lobe, “Project for a New American
Imbroglio,” LobeLog Foreign Policy, Aug. 28, 2014.]
Neocon Max Boot, for example, wrote about the need for “a
politico-military strategy to annihilate ISIS rather than simply chip
around the edges of its burgeoning empire,” which would “require a
commitment of some 10,000 U.S. advisors and Special Operators, along
with enhanced air power, to work with moderate elements in both Iraq and
Syria.”
Fred and Kimberly Kagan have developed a strategic plan involving up to
25,000 American ground troops to combat the Islamic State, which I have
already discussed at length. Some of the other noted members of the
neocon war-on-the-Islamic-State chorus include Bill Kristol,John
Podhoretz, Dan Senor, David Brooks, John Bolton, Richard Perle, Danielle
Pletka (vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the
American Enterprise Institute), and, as noted earlier, Charles Krauthammer.
Needless to say, neither the neocons, nor any other mainstream
commentators for that matter, have uttered a word about Israel’s
inaction. As Scott McConnell wrote in August in The American
Conservative, “over the past two generations thousands of articles have
been written proclaiming that Israel is a ‘vital strategic ally’ of the
United States, our best and only friend in the ‘volatile’ Middle East.
The claim is a commonplace among serving and aspiring Congressmen. I may
have missed it, but has anyone seen a hint that our vital regional ally
could be of any assistance at all in the supposedly civilizational
battle against ISIS?”
However, it would be far wiser for the United States to follow the
example of Israel here — and, in fact, always follow the example of
Israel by adhering to national interest (that of the United States, of
course, not Israel) — than to follow the advice of those American
supporters of Israel who have, because of their influence on American
Middle East policy, involved the United States in endless wars creating
a regional environment beneficial to Israel from the perspective of the
Israeli Right.
Stephen J. Sniegoski is the author of The Transparent Cabal: The
Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National
Interest of Israel.
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